AN: Been wanting to post this chapter since I wrote it.
"You're saying hundreds of the Vlka Fenryka lost their lives in Lorgath Prime and they did not achieve their objective at all?" Lord Inquisitor Arima of the Great Clan Kishou stared at the intelligence report that came to him, marked off as an object of extreme importance. Approximately 756 members of the Vlka Fenryka perished in the campaign to pacify the rebellion on Lorgath Prime; unofficially, they were there to prevent the summoning of Kairos Fateweaver by the very same cult of heretics and wytches that'd overtaken the previous government in a swift and bloody coup that saw the deaths of thousands of loyal Imperial Citizens.
"Yes and no, my lord."
"Of course." Arima sighed as he turned the page. "Things are never as simple as just that."
Kairos Fateweaver was one of the most powerful Daemons of Tzeentch known to the Imperium. And, appropriately, the Wolves of Fenris brought just about every single asset they possessed to try and salvage the situation before entire systems were lost to the influence of Chaos. The force they'd brought to bear was mighty indeed, the full might of the Vlka Fenryka, capable of conquering a thousand worlds. Their initial response was swift and brutal, as was expected of them. Within a single day, the rebellion was crushed entirely, its leaders hunted down and executed, and the rebel warriors scattered and slaughtered wherever they might've been.
That was, until, they encountered an element that... made no sense.
A single man... just a man, the survivors claimed, who possessed powers unlike anything they've ever seen before – some form of invulnerability that made him impervious to just about anything, alongside the ability to destroy portions of an entire city with impunity. They didn't even stand a chance. The man utterly trounced them and made the Vlka Fenryka look like a legion of fools and babes. In the end, what the Wolves of Fenris lost was of greater value than the world they fought to save from the grip of Chaos – hundreds of gene seeds, lost, destroyed so utterly and so completely that no traces remained.
Arima's eyes narrowed at that. There were very few singular entities in the entire galaxy capable of such feats of power and nearly all of them were daemons. And that was the most baffling bit, their enemy did not, in fact, channel the energies of Chaos, but wielded something else altogether, the rarest form of Sorcery in the entire Milky Way Galaxy, its practitioners so few and so rare that less than 1% of the human population even knew about them.
Their Rune Priests, the few who fought the monster of a man, had only one conclusion; their enemy was a Jujutsu Sorcerer, one of a kind, more powerful than any Curse User they've ever encountered, more powerful than any of the living Special Grades, which meant the man, himself, was Special Grade, bringing their number up to a staggering eleven in the entire breadth of the Imperium.
That was not good, because there were no such things as a Special Grade Curse User; it was unheard of, unthinkable. And, more than that, every single male Special Grade was a member of the Devourers Legion.
Arima could already isee the headache that was coming his way. The Jujutsu Clan Heads were going to unleash their forces the moment they heard about this, which meant this problem had to be dealt with before knowledge of the incident reached them. He especially did not want to think about what the Devourers Legion would do if they heard of this debacle; that legion of bloodlusted psychopaths was unpredictable and destructive, feared by loyalists and traitors alike, because the only reason they weren't declared renegade was the fact that the High Lords were to afraid of them to actually do it. And also because the Devourers did, in fact, aid the Imperium from time to time – when they felt like it or when doing so just happened to be a fortunate side effect of whatever they were doing at the time.
No, neither the Great Jujutsu Clans or the Devourer Legion could be made aware of this.
Thankfully, the Vlka Fenryka were unlikely to talk about such a shameful defeat and, ultimately, there were very few people who were even there to witness the Special Grade Curse User after the Wolves of Fenris exterminated just about every living thing on Lorgath Prime in their anger and humiliation.
"This is a disaster," Arima concluded, placing down the data sheet in front of him. As one of the very few Inquisitors who also happened to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer, he was uniquely suited to dealing with this... annoyance. He wasn't a Special Grade, however, but that only meant he had to strive even harder to earn his place, to master the fullness of his Cursed Technique until there was nothing left for him to master. "I'm going to take over the investigation."
"Yes, my lord." Arima's apprentice, Interrogator Kaneki, also a Jujutsu Sorcerer, bowed his head.
"I'm also issuing a Code: Black on the matter." Arima finished. "No witnesses. No one can hear of this. Slash and burn every single report on the matter. If anyone else caught wind of the report, eliminate them; I don't care if it's a fellow inquisitor. No one can be allowed to know. That will be all, Kaneki."
"By your command, Lord Inquisitor."
His apprentice bowed, before walking out of his office. The Lord Inquisitor could not help but smile as Kaneki left; that boy had plenty of potential. And, in time, he might even be strong enough to be a First Grade Sorcerer, like Arima himself. His Innate Technique was certainly potent and his drive to become greater than himself was incredible; it was a stroke of nearly-divine luck that Arima found the child on a world far from the reach of the Great Jujutsu Clans.
Arima stood up and pull opened one of his drawers, where he kept a copy of a very old document, penned by the Primarch Sukuna himself, detailing every single Cursed Technique he knew and his thoughts on each of them. No one knew why he wrote it, but many Jujutsu Sorcerers considered it to be a holy relic of sorts, considering many of them worshiped Ryomen Sukuna and anything the man left behind. How Arima came to be in possession of such a relic was... by all rights, a stroke of luck.
"Let's see," Arima muttered as he went through the list. "Invulnerability... gravity manipulation of some kind... tsk... the Vlka Fenryka mentioned something about repulsion and attraction..."
His eyes widened. "It can't be..."
And a few hours later, Lord Inquisitor Arima's vessel, the Trishula of Sukuna, roared as its mighty engines flared to life before surging into the great cosmic void.
"And that's the last one," Satoru muttered, sighing as he pulled his hand away from the Aeldari woman, who knelt on the ground at his feet. Like all the others, who came to him, Satoru removed the mark of the Thirsty Bitch from her soul and set her free. He'd lost count of how many marks he'd burned off today. It was tiring, but worth it. Why? Well, every single Aeldari was a natural sorcerer. And freeing them essentially solidified their fate in the fact that Satoru was the Britheim they've been waiting for their whole lives – worship. They worshiped him.
The Aeldari woman arose, but kept her head low, muttering something he did not want to listen to under her breath. She kept her head low as she walked away and only held her head up when she was about fifteen meters away, like everyone else. There was a ritual to all this, Satoru figured, but he didn't care enough to figure it out; he probably should, though, because he was at the center of it.
Ordinarily, Satoru would balk at the very idea and then die of laughter. But this was different. Worship by the Aeldari produced a very tangible effect that even he could not deny. Their faith made him, quite literally, stronger. And not just by a little bit. His output was now twice greater than it had ever been, something Satoru himself had never even considered was possible before as Cursed Energy output was one of those things that remained static. But he was wrong, apparently. The best part, however, was his Cursed Energy's rate of regeneration. It had been pretty fast before and his efficiency meant he'd barely exhaust his reserves. But now, the rate of regeneration pretty much doubled.
At the level that he was now, he could throw out about a hundred uses of Hollow Technique: Purple before he'd even feel winded.
All of this also meant that healing himself and others with Reverse Cursed Energy became easier and far more efficient, alongside the creation and the molding of Wraithbone – or, as Satoru liked to call his version of it, Cursed Matter.
So this was the path to power, he realized quickly enough. If he got enough of these hot space elves to worship him, then – sooner or later – he'd become a god. On a personal level, Satoru did not like the idea of being worshiped as a literal deity, much less a messianic figure whose whole schtick was to save a dying race of aliens and bring them to paradise or some shit. The prophecy was weird and no one really remembered it well enough to figure out all the nifty little details that actually mattered. Whatever the case, Satoru didn't like it, but it made sense; after all, he can't become a god if no one worshiped him. And there was no denying the benefits.
So, eh. He'll play the role of Britheim as long as it made him powerful. Besides, it kind of felt good to help these people escape eternal damnation.
The problem with relying on worship as a source of power, however, was that it made him dependent on worship. He couldn't stray too far from the Aeldari expectations of the Britheim or else their faith waivers and their worship loses potency. So, it was a delicate balance of maintaining his personal freedom, while keeping the space elves fixed on him. Annoying. Worth it in the short run, while he figured out everything he needed to figure out; eventually, however, Satoru was going to leave. They could worship him all they like or they could stop; it wouldn't matter by then.
What mattered, however, was that he found a more permanent method of gaining power. That was the hard part. That was the reason he was even tolerating all of this, because he challenged the literal gods of the Cursed Realm and told them he'd be greater than all four of them; and that was going to be a pretty hard challenge to beat. And Satoru was going to do everything in his power to get to the peak.
At the very least, being worshiped also meant the Aeldari would obey at least most of what he told them to do, like not kneel on the floor around him or hover around him like a bunch of flies, which they now took as some kind of divine edict or some shit.
"I still can't thank you enough for what you've done, Lord Gojo," Caoimhe said as she walked up to his side. She'd been there since morning. It was probably around noon now – he wasn't particularly sure about that one as Aeldari times were different, but the estimation was pretty good as the Farseer had been there for more than ten hours, just watching. He'd gotten used to her presence. It was nice to have someone as powerful as her around; Satoru didn't feel alone.
He didn't even need to sleep with her anymore. Just having her around felt nice. Her presence kind of reminded him of Geto – someone who could be an equal. The other Farseers were beginning to explore the power that'd lain dormant within them for all their life, but they were afraid. Caoimhe did not have that fear. And so she was the first to unlock the full breadth of what an Aeldari Sorcerer was capable of, even if it clearly scared her.
After all, she'd been thought that, all her life, using too much of her latent potential would catch the attention of the Thirsty Bitch and, thusly, would end with her soul devoured. And Caoimhe had been alive, by her own reckoning, for at least a thousand years; a few days of freedom wasn't going to undo a thousand years' worth of conditioning.
"You keep saying that," Satoru huffed, smiling as he stretched his limbs. He breathed in, his smile fading. "But you're not like the others. So, tell me, Caoimhe; do you think I'm the Britheim?"
The Aeldari Farseer smiled and huffed and shook her head, her red hair swaying in the wind. And then, she reached in and took his hand into her own. Her hands, Satoru found, were soft and her fingers delicate. "No, I don't think the Britheim is even real. But I believe in you, Satoru. I believe that you represent the best of humanity. I believe that you are a friend to my people and I believe that you have granted us... hope. For the first time in ten thousand years, my people have hope again. And that hope is greater than any prophesy."
Right then, a great psychic alarm blared, alerting every single one of them. Even Satoru heard it, like the chiming of bells on a catholic church. His eyes narrowed and his brows furrowed as he turned to Caoimhe. "What's going on?"
"It's an invasion."
AN: Chapter 31 is up on (Pat)reon!