A/N: A little earlier than promised, but this chapter has been sitting completed on my PC for over a week. If I leave it any longer, I'm just going to keep re-reading and changing small bits and not work on the next few chapters.
"Kyrazis, we are nearing the exit point for our travels in the immaterium." Reported one of the bridge crew.
"Good, the sooner we're out of here the better." He replied, as a shudder crossed his skin. The immaterium seemed to close in, like the muscular intestinal walls of a beast that had already swallowed them whole. Even though the readings in front of Kyrazis were in the green, he couldn't help but feel a constant dread that slowly sucked the strength from his body.
"We have a number of hails from other groups of refugees from the Core Worlds of the Empire." The comms officer called out.
"Whatever contacted us seems to be drawing every last one in a single swoop." Mordraxus chuckled as his bent form shuffled into Kyrazis's peripheral vision.
"To help us, or to finish us off." He muttered in reply.
Nobody answered. Although the psychic touch had been soft, there was a feeling of foreboding that had been growing the closer they were to reaching the point they were being called to.
For Kyrazis, it was a strange sticky sensation that made him want to hang his head, and a subtler form of the bite of wounded pride after a lost spar.
"What should we do with the hails, Kyrazis?" The comms officer pulled him out of his brooding.
"Who has the largest fleet?"
"It appears we do, at the moment."
"Then order the others to follow our lead." Kyrazis snapped. "They won't complain as long as we're the first to spring whatever lies ahead of all of us."
The comms officer nodded, and relayed his message to the other ships.
There were more of them than before. A small fleet was building up composed of mostly patrolling cruiser groups, and a few policing escort class vessels. Many of the cruisers were outfitted with launch bays for Dark-Star fighter craft and Eagle bombers.
Both single-person craft were important for patrols, as they could extend the area of space covered by the ships; while also ensuring any smaller escort or single-person craft that may pass by unnoticed by the long range scanners were found and destroyed. Especially before such vessels could close the distance where the holofields that reduced the targeting accuracy of any weapons aimed at the ship were less effective.
Numerous plasma firing Star-Cannon artillery and laser based Pulsar Cannon beams, all facing forwards, jutted out of the aerodynamically shaped prow, while 2 or 3 almost chiropteran solar sails extended backwards; like the extended wing of a bat in mid flight.
All of these elements flowed together organically, courtesy of its Wraithbone based design; which allowed construction without nuts, bolts, screws, or even soldering leaving every surface as smooth as an undisturbed lake.
However, despite its brittle bone like appearance, the Wraithbone was only marginally weaker than ceramite and plastisteel; being created from the very psychic energies of the immaterium, and was soft or as hard as the bonesinger who sang it into existence could make it.
Kyrazis sighed, the heavy feeling growing larger. It was a strange feeling that felt familiar, and alien at the same time. An image of a childhood memory, his first childhood before his many reincarnations, crossed across his mind. It was the first time he and his sister had fought, and he had shoved her backwards into one of the trees in the park. He had felt bad at the time, like he had gone too far with something, and wanted to take it back.
'Guilt' Kyrazis shook his head as the term for the emotion came back to him.
Aeldari always returned from death, and with their long multi-milenia lives, it wasn't hard to find someone you had killed viciously in the arena walking around after a few hundred years, arrogantly boasting that it was a lucky strike that ended them, and that it was their turn to be the victor. It was difficult to feel any remorse when there were no consequences.
The only reason he could remember the name for the feeling was because he had to investigate the reason for his morbid mood after leaving his home planet.
The face of his sister, and the faces of hundreds of other nameless Aeldari flashed through his mind, causing Kyrazis to wince.
He thought he had gotten over this feeling, this 'guilt'. His sister did what she wanted, and he had done what was necessary to save the most number of people in their escape.
Kyrazis felt like he heard a ghostly cackle in his ear and his head snapped upwards; whipping from side to side only to see the bridge as normal, and the ever present purple of the immaterium in the viewing screen before him.
Traveling through the immaterium was dangerous. They had lost a ship once while they were traveling from one Mon-keigh world to the other, and he had seen the images transmitted from that ship. Daemons swarming over struggling Aeldari; screaming, blood, and then silence as they lost contact with the ship; only to watch it through the viewing ports slowly fall behind the rest of them, deeper into the immaterium before it vanished under a sea of purple.
Kyrazis grit his teeth. He wasn't sure whether the laughter he heard was just another hallucination caused by the sudden reappearance of guilt, or a grim warning that this ship was seconds away from being devoured by the immaterium itself.
Seconds passed, and only the occasional noise from the communicator and busy bridge crew could be heard.
Kyrazis shook his head.
The thing that had contacted them had unsettled him. Not just from the warm, comforting touch that now brought these feelings of guilt and nervousness, but simply because it had contacted them.
Whether it was or wasn't a god, no creature did anything without a reason. There was going to be a bargain made where they were going. He was no trader, but he could see at least that much was true.
'What is its price?' Kyrazis wondered, preferring to distract himself with the thought, rather than stew in this resurrected guilt and fear.
He couldn't remember any stories of the gods, or their names. There was a mention of a bloody handed creature somewhere, and perhaps a great war… but all the rest was just the yammerings of some street performing harlequin the rest of them would gang up on.
'Why now?' Kyrazis wondered. 'Why contact us after everything has been destroyed?' It seemed a little late for divine intervention in his mind. Everyone was dead. Eaten or worse by the things that had come out of that purple cloud.
'Was that some sort of divine punishment?' He thought angrily. If it was, then the creature that called them was not much better than the daemons they ran away from.
"Gods are as evil as the devils they use to drive their flock towards them!" Kyrazis remembered one of Hekatii's iconoclasts shouting out in one of the lounges at the arena back home; where onlookers went to cool off after watching a match so the next one could be enjoyed with renewed excitement.
"To allow harm to fall on those you want obedient to you is but the fat slave driver handing the whip to their lackey because they're too lazy to do it themselves." The iconoclast continued, possibly drunk on one of the ampoules that were passed around for free in order to relax the mind.
"Gods are the tools of tyrants!" she crowed, to the annoyance of most of the other occupants. "So, it is our enlightened duty to free those who believe in them by desecrating their places of worship and idols. If they must worship something, they can worship us! At least we listen to their screams!" The iconoclast cackled.
Then somebody threw a chair at her, knocking her to the floor, and a brawl ensued. This was Qa'leh's arena, not Hekatii's pile of junk. If the iconoclasts wanted to enlist others, they might as well do it somewhere else.
Kyrazis shook his head away from the memory.
He didn't know anything about the gods, but he could see a grain of truth in what the iconoclast had said. It was a serendipitous timing for anyone offering salvation to the Aeldari at the moment. There was no bigger whip than watching the destruction of everything you knew and loved.
'Why now…' Kyrazis couldn't stop himself from asking the question that he had buried deep inside. 'Why us? Why me?' The long string of unpleasant questions began to drag him under.
He bent his wrist inwards, and drops of blood started to seep out from underneath the gauntlet.
Kyrazis let the pain slowly silence the questions, before reaching underneath his gauntlet, and pulled something back with a wince. A little more blood sputtered out, before the pressure applied by his fingers staunched the bleeding.
The next questions he always thought of were 'Why did I survive?' and 'Why was I let go while the others were devoured?'
He knew the answer to those ones, and he didn't like to be reminded of them.
Regardless, the other questions never ended either, and he didn't like to think about what the potential answers for those were. The answers he had plagued him enough.
Kyrazis closed his eyes, and with very wounded pride, tried to remember the feeling that had touched his soul. Every time he saw something new, as if the feeling brought up some long forgotten memory in his mind.
A smile.
Blond hair.
Warm winds.
The smell of fresh mud.
And a single red and black tear.
Recently, the only way he could get away from his mental anguish was this feeling. It was humiliating; relying on an unknown power, to leave himself at its mercy. However, at the same time, he could not stop himself from reaching out to it.
'Now, I give my tears and blood to this stirring sleeper. Let my blessing flow across this land.'
Kyrazis almost jumped out of the command throne. There was a voice that time, and it brought both horror and wonder through his entire being.
'What… was that?' Kyrazis thought to himself. That voice, although beautiful, froze him to his very core. It was a promise of a gift, but at the same time a promise of taking away. A new start and a time of total end.
"Opening portal!" The navigator cried, waking Kyrazis from his stupor.
The immaterium puckred before them then opened up; becoming a tunnel back to reality. The cruiser slipped passed through the roiling mouth of the portal, and the portal collapsed behind them.
"Mon-keigh ship detected!" One of the bridge staff reported, and the 3D images infront of Kyrazis shifted to show the planet, their ships, and an utterly humongous vessel that was shifting to point itself towards them.
"I didn't know Mon-keigh ships got that large." Kyrazis muttered, mildly impressed. The only ships he had seen bigger were the continent sized Craftworlds.
"A relic of their fallen past, perhaps." Mordraxus shrugged.
"We are the relic of a fallen past." Kyrazis replied darkly. "Move cautiously! What about the planet?"
"Barely habitable." Another of the bridge crew replied. "Mostly ice and rocks. The heavy cloud cover from the ash volcanoes across the surface prevents almost all sunlight from reaching the ground. Hot springs and thermal vents do support a small number of simple life forms, but there is no sentient life below."
Kyrazis raised an eyebrow. "Then why call us here?"
The planet below them was a mostly dead world; hardly a haven for a doomed people. Especially with what they had to do to stay alive.
"Kyrazis, we are receiving a hail from the Mon-keigh vessel. Primitive electromagnetic transmissions." The comms officer reported from below.
"Can we understand it?"
"Barely;"
"Then answer it."
The officer nodded, and brought up an image before all of them. It was an unencrypted general transmission, addressed to all the ships.
There was first static, and then an image began to form.
There was a woman there dressed in a simple shift. Blond hair flowed down her thin neck and shoulders. Soft willowy features were slightly creased with worry.
Kyrazis's mind only had a moment to process this before he felt his vision narrow and darken. Everything that had been kept inside spilt out, like a black flood regurgitated from a clogged sewage tunnel on stormy night. Black ichor pulsed up from his heart, and he felt his very soul cry out as all reason and logic was drowned out by his emotions; as if he was sinking backwards into a pool of black caustic muck.
"MOTHER!" He screamed, and the figure looked at him. Even though this was a one way transmission, he knew she saw him. There was a slight wetness to her eyes; tears welling up at the sight of them.
"What have you done to us!" Kyrazis cried, reflecting the voice of every occupant of every vessel that was there.
There was a great sadness upon that face, and all Aeldari who saw her felt their heart wrench at the sight of it.
But, Kyrazis couldn't stop. Even as tears ran down his cheeks, and blood dripped from a bitten lip, he could no longer stop himself.
"Why do you come to us now?! What are you doing on that ship?!"
He didn't know what he was feeling anymore.
Guilt.
Grief.
Rage.
All poured over him like molten magma; burning and trapping him in the viscous flows of emotion, like a fly in flaming amber.
"Were we so unimportant that you had time to dally with the lesser races of the galaxy while we died?!"
It was blasphemy. What right did a mortal have asking a question to a god whose name he didn't even know? But, there was no stopping him, as all the pain and sorrow seemed to burn his very being like real fire.
The woman before them opened her mouth and spoke; and Kyrazis felt a great feeling of shame wash over him, dousing all the other burning feelings he had, leaving only a burnt out husk behind.
"I came as soon as I could to find you."
Even though he was paralyzed by his emotions, new bitterness bubbled up from inside him. All care was thrown to the wind as he felt himself let go of the control that had kept his psychic abilities sealed out of fear of eternal damnation.
"Then tell me what you have found, mother." Kyrazis hissed, glaring back at her. "Look upon us. What do you see before you?" He whispered in a voice no one on the bridge could hear, but he knew from the look in her eyes that she understood his meaning.
Kyrazis let go, and all the memories and emotions exploded out of his mind into the aether. Everything he had done and saw roiled out across the void; all so he could show his divine mother The Fall through mortal eyes.
