Evoray Nox, Farseer and elder of the Aeldari Exodite planet Quilan was genuinely surprised as the near-mythical Fate's Sundering phased out of existence before them in the Sea of Souls. He now sat waiting, wondering on what to do next as they coasted in the Immaterium. They had been following the legendary vessel for thousands of light years as it raced from Kolch in pursuit of another vessel. After a harrowing chase, Fate's Sundering unmade itself completely, leaving no trace behind. In his many years of living, he had seen much in the way of Immatereal irregularities, but seeing a vessel completely delete itself from their senses, both sight and psychic, was a new development.
The Farseer, like most of his kind, didn't like to be surprised, and he made a sour face as he temporarily lost his temper, punching the control console ahead of him. Damn! No one else in the small helm of the Dove Tear said anything, similarly stunned. Taking a few deep breaths, he pulled himself back from his anger. Surely it would reappear. He took another deep breath, and decided to wait a little bit.
Evoray was lithe and strong in appearance. His dark hair fell messily around his fair face, and his eyes were a stony grey that were far more troubled than most of his Exodite brethren. The Farseer usually wore a serious continence; his expression was often said to resemble a marble statue. Like many in his ragtag crew here, he was not actually a native of Quilan. He was born on Craftworld Alaitoc, where he had walked the path of the seer, and had been elevated to Farseer right before being sent to aid the distant Exodite world in divining threats from the wakening Yngiract that lurked in the edges of the galaxy.
Accompanying Evoray were two other vessels holding Rangers, Seers, a Warlock, and the Keeper of Lost Ledgers, who sat beside him. Most of the native population of Quilan rarely left the planet, so in emergencies, visitors or immigrants would be requested to take up assignments off world. Their goal was observation and study of the unreal vessel they shadowed. They were to discover who had resurrected Fate's Sundering, their goals, temperament, and general strength. These things could not be easily divined from afar considering the strangeness of the vessel. Unfortunately, very little had been discerned from this mission so far, but they now knew that Fate's Sundering was now piloted by a female Mon-keigh who traveled with very few individuals. While attempting to view her, Evoray had received an image of the aviatrix's angry face as she psychically snapped at him with a unknown profanity. The Farseer was able to confirm her identity as a Marii-Suze through her distinctive bright golden halo, which actually left a shadow that resembled a slight physical sunburn across his cheeks.
He at least also knew her common name now. It was Erika. Very prosaic sounding, unremarkable. "Err-ick-ah..." he mouthed the name without speaking it, and pondering what it meant in her home reality. He had also been able to figure out the new name the ship carried. The Fate's Sundering was now called the Divine Retribution. In all honesty, the Farseer enjoyed that name even better than its classic designation. It meant that this captain had spirit.
Weeks ago, Evoray (along with many in Quilan) had begun to dream of a blazing eagle whenever he rested. It was wreathed in flames, like a phoenix rising from the ruin of the galaxy. His abilities within confirmed that it was 'coming', but he wasn't exactly sure what the eagle-phoenix was. Concerned, he spoke to his fellow elders, which then communed with the World Spirit itself about what to do. It was divined that they must visit the Keeper of Lost Ledgers in her library. They deduced that Fate's Sundering was stirring again after over ten millennia with a new captain, name, and purpose. Along with that, at least one Marii-Suze (roughly translated as "The Revelator" or "Revelation" in an ancient language lost even to them) had recently made the crossing into their reality. Beside him, the scholar turned another page in her ancient book.
The Keeper of Lost Ledgers was a small woman named Y'Linn who wore her dark eyes in a perpetual expression of contemplation. She had devoted her life toward the research of lost artifacts of great power from the ancient, forgotten times before the Fall. Despite extensive efforts to catalog it, no one was actually certain when the Fate's Sundering had first appeared in the galaxy, or even who had built it. The vessel had a peculiar habit of unmaking itself in the minds of sentient creatures when dormant, so meticulous records had to be kept to retain the knowledge on what it was, and what it could do. Even then, the information on the near-mythical ship would often find itself destroyed, lost, or forgotten. It was as if the laws of their universe found the strange fate-rending vessel abominable, and sought to close knowledge of it like an open wound.
Whatever it was, it was incalculably valuable, and equally as destructive. Y'Linn had stressed this repeatedly to the Farseer. They should not seek conflict with it. Look, but don't touch.
Y'Linn was actually the first to inform the elders that the ship she studied would soon reappear; she had studied her own visions and aligned them with what the ancient texts described. Despite this miraculous find, the scholar was very hesitant to pursue the Fate's Sundering as it set out on its new journey. In her past, Y'Linn had seen so much death, and so much pain. The prospect of following the dangerous ship was not welcoming in the least. She had been a refugee from the now destroyed Craftworld Kher-Ys, and had fled with her library in tow. Y'Linn had run across the entire galaxy with her priceless collection, hoping to find respite far away from the Eye of Terror on an Exodite world. Quilan had become her home. So, it was unsurprising when the scholar was not pleased when the elders demanded that she travel and study the Fate's Sundering personally. Y'Linn was an expert on the ship, and would be essential in this mission, despite her trepidation.
After a short, divisive meeting in her library, more celestial charts were drawn up, and others with precognitive strengths were consulted. They knew now with certainty that the Fate's Sundering was active somewhere. The location of the ship remained strangely elusive, even with their horoscopes and visions. For the spirit of Quilan to be disrupted so dramatically, they knew it must be close. Dreams of burning eagles persisted through the planet, increasing in vivid celerity. The World Spirit turned restlessly within the minds of all the Aeldari on Quilan, from the wildest hunters on the fields, to the frailest elders in their beds. One night, a young maiden known for her true gift of prophecy was found dead on her bedroom floor after having drawn a star map on a wall with her own blood. That was enough. A small traveling party was quickly drawn up, and detailed on their secretive mission. The group was given little notice by the ruling elders, and were required to depart immediately for where the dead maiden's map had indicated.
The Keeper of the Lost Ledgers assured the perturbed Farseer that the disruptive dreams they had been experiencing were normal as they boarded their three ships, their destination some distance west of them. They were to avoid being seen if they could, as the ship was purported to be obscenely dangerous. The legendary vessel's classical designation throughout their people's history was the Fate's Sundering, after all. Its fate-shifting properties were of great interest to many Aeldari. Craftworlds from across the galaxy had begun communing with the elders of Quilan in excitement, with Lugganath and Alaitoc sending envoys out to their remote location.
Fate's Sundering had the power to reweave the fabric of prophecy, and with it, entirely new shifts of the balance of power in the galaxy were now possible. It could remake the impossible into the improbable, and to a dying race such as Aeldari, this was extraordinarily attractive. Now that it was active, it must first be studied, and the earlier, the better. Evoray and his team had departed within a single hour after being given this assignment. Just after breaking atmosphere, the Farseer had been struck almost unconscious by the psychic whiplash of a terrible new tear in reality. Even when he felt his young son die of shock during the event, he couldn't turn around to attend to funerary matters, and he had wept nearly the entire duration of their trip. Their destination was Kolch, the home of the Nome King and his treasure hoard.
Despite the Farseer's grief, jokes had been nervously exchanged among the crew that the Nome King had actually managed to steal the Fate's Sundering, and he prayed that wasn't true. Y'Linn had assured him that only souled creatures could pilot the ship they sought, so at least that was reassuring. Kolch had only been inhabited by a single mad Yngiract King by the name of Roquat the Red, and for many millennia, he had been a local pest in their galactic neighborhood, finding ways to appear on Quilan and other worlds using ancient tech. The so-called "King" often behaved as a common thief, and when he wasn't threatening genocide for imagined slights, he would attempt to steal artifacts that caught his fancy. Roquat was a collector of a sort, and had accumulated a treasure hoard of artifacts over his many millennia of unlife as the rest of his world slept. This was actually Evoray's second visit to Kolch. During one of the Nome King's century-long naps, the Farseer had actually accompanied a team of visiting rangers from Craftworld Alaitoc to liberate a quantity of Spirit Stones from the Nome King's clutches.
Their three ships found themselves hiding behind the rings of an outer planet as the two other seers joined him in attempting to view and understand the ship as they sensed the Nome King's sudden and unexpected wakefulness. The mad king shouldn't even be awake right now. The Farseer's divinations a scant year ago suggested that the eccentric Yngiract overlord would be napping for at least a few more years. Along with that insight, an unusually destructive solar nova had a good chance of sterilizing Kolch shortly afterward, leaving a treasure trove safe for easy salvaging. Evoray had foreseen that the Nome King's empire would never wake. But, when Fate's Sundering stirred, that all changed. Roquat's empire was now showing definitive signs of wakefulness. The Yngiract under Kolch were now waking, and would very soon be a problem. That should've never happened!
For a Farseer well-acquainted with predicting fate's progress across time, seeing the allotted future fall apart before him was greatly upsetting. It felt like a spider spinning a broken web anew. It was one thing to read about it in a book, and an entirely new abashment to see it in person.
Shortly after they had arrived on Kolch, Fate's Sundering and its Marii-Suze aviatrix had sensed them. Blessedly, her attention was fixated on ruthlessly running down a human mercenary ship instead, which was destroyed in the Immaterium. Afterward, the eagle had paused, and simply unmade itself. It wasn't like anything he had ever seen, and with his gifts, that was again certainly humbling.
After a short wait, it still wasn't reappearing on any sensors, esoteric or technological. Surely it wasn't destroyed?
Gathering himself back to the present again, Evoray turned to the scholar beside him and asked, "Where is it? I cannot sense it anywhere. Have they been lost?" Y'Linn didn't seem too surprised.
"No, Farseer. Fate's Sundering cannot be undone so simply. It is likely utilizing some kind of advanced drive to displace itself in reality. It will surely return to reality in time, but when, I cannot tell. The pebble has begun the avalanche, and cannot be stopped. Remember, we have been seen, and now it is wished that we do not see them. We are lucky it did not seek pursuit of us, and lucky that we were able to gain some insight as to who pilots it now," Y'Linn replied as she looked up, closing the book she had been reading. She brushed her mouse brown hair away from her troubled green eyes, and drummed her long fingers against the old book. She didn't want to be here, and it was obvious. No one really wanted to be here.
"I don't understand," Evoray said, his brow furrowing as he leaned back in his chair, sinking into its soft foam contours. He placed a thin hand on his forehead in a gesture of frustration. "Why does it keep choosing Mon-keigh? It has been so many ages since one of our kind piloted it. We would certainly do better in our wisdom."
"It wills as it does, Farseer," Y'Linn responded. "It chooses souls of a particular quality to pilot it, not bodies. It is theorized that it bends fate around to find a suitable master. Those without a birth-root in the Immaterium are somewhat resistant to Chaos corruption, which is maybe why the vessel chooses Plane Walkers from beyond our reality. Perhaps our race's relationship to She-Who-Thirsts prevents Marii-Suze from coming to us now. A pity."
Evoray sniffed a concession. That was depressing. It was a waste that the priceless ancient vessel kept falling into the hands of the animalistic Mon-keigh, but he supposed the scholar's explanation made sense. What mattered right now was that they could no longer sense or track it, so he decided to give the order to head back home.
Dove Feather, Dove Song, he psychically spoke to the other ships that flanked him here in the Immaterium. We pass back into realspace. We no longer follow Fate's Sundering.
Confirmed, both other pilots responded to him in mind. The green-haired Seer standing to his left moved his hands over a floating series of various smooth crystals, and with a few gestures, Evoray felt the familiar crackling sensation of reality becoming real again. The Farseer hated the Immaterium. It felt like a sewer bath. It was easier to think when in realspace.
"Where are we? Location?" the Farseer asked no one in particular, as he rubbed his sore eyes. Evoray knew someone would answer him, and he was too exhausted to deal with it himself. All he could think about was going home to say goodbye to his son.
A young Ranger busying himself over a console to his right responded, "We are nearly 500 light years west of the rift of Malefactus, and by my estimates, there is a functioning Gate on a dead world six light years to the northwest and level with the galactic plane. We can map our path home from there. Further west from there, the Sea of Souls grows perturbed. I apologize, but I still cannot see where Fate's Sundering leapt to."
"Do not trouble yourself with that, Jir. Set course for that Gate. We're going home, everyone."
The feeling of relief passed through all the Aeldari in attendance. The Ranger was now looking at a holographic representation of the space ahead of them, which was obscured by a large cloud of dust. "Should we pass through or around this dust cloud here? It would take some time off our passage," Jir inquired.
"Is that part of Sebastian's Malediction?" Evoray inquired, standing up to examine the cloud of turbulent space weather before the Ranger. That whole area ahead looked like a wreck of space dust, weak reality, and bad memories. Everyone avoided the Malediction if they could, even the orks. It was so big that it upset parts of space around it for many light years with pockets of disruption even outside its formal boundaries. "No one wants to go through that awful mess."
"I am familiar with this area of space. Sebastian's Malediction is still much further to the west. But, the Immaterium here is similarly perturbed. Perhaps it is a satellite echo of the ancient curse?" another Ranger standing behind him responded helpfully.
"Well, I'm not risking any more surprises. We've been through enough. Go around. Better to be safe than sorry. Whoever Sebastian was, he's certainly made everyone's life more difficult. Now that I think about it, Y'Linn, did you, by any chance, ever run across who this mysterious 'Sebastian' was in your books? Everyone I ask seems ignorant of the origins of that name," Evoray asked the scholar, who looked up from her book again.
Y'Linn shook her head. "No, Farseer. I have no such knowledge. It appears that the origins of Sebastian's Malediction seem to be lost. It is an enduring mystery. The Mon-keigh ruins within it precede the Fall, so all records will likely remain lost to time."
"Strange, really. I read that there are ruins of a great empire within the dust, but only the bravest treasure seekers go there. I had read a curious thing as well. It was written that the name 'Sebastian' did not align with the vernacular of that civilization. An alien linguistics expert wrote that it felt very much out of place. Perhaps it is the name of a powerful daemon that caused their doom?" the Farseer mused, observing the shape of the interstellar dust cloud. It didn't behave like a Chaos-based anomaly, but it still caused a sort of instinctual loathing when he thought about it.
Well, enough whimsy and philosophy. Evoray wanted to go home, and he wanted to hug his surviving daughter. He also missed his wife, but she had run off with the Harlequins last year, and the Farseer had resigned himself that he might never see her again. Freshly reminded of his recent losses caused tears to form in his eyes again. Yes, time to go home. Evoray psychically informed the two other ships with their instructions to detour around the dust cloud. No more danger today if he could help it. With a brief thrum of their engines, the three elegant ships had turned around, and were blessedly homebound.