Author's Note: For those interested, there are now five advance chapters on P-atreon (remove the spaces and dash): p-atreon/ SkySage24.
"I'm glad Iyanden is doing better, Mehlendri. You have done well."
The Fleetmaster of Iyanden blushed slightly at Isha's praise. "Thank you, Your Serenity, but it is truly your blessings that I must thank. Before you came, we were in truly dire straits."
They were in Mehlendri's private solar, in the spire of Iyanden where she lived. Isha could sense that the rooms had been altered recently, the wraithbone and crystal having been reshaped and extended so that there was a balcony with a direct view of the World Tree.
"You should not downplay your accomplishments. You led Iyanden here, to me, and held it together these past several thousand years through the Strife and even the Fall of the Dominion. By any measure, these are impressive accomplishments. You and the people of Iyanden have your strength, and if you did not have that strength, Iyanden would not be here to receive my blessings."
Isha sipped from the tea that Mehlendri had served her, enjoying the taste of Eldar herbs. It was nice; to taste something from home once more, even if that home was something she might never see again. Isha could have grown it herself, of course, but the hard work and love her children had poured into cultivating these herbs and making this tea made it that much sweeter for her.
Mehlendri bowed her head, embarrassed but pleased by the praise.
But there was something else, a spark of uncertainty and discomfort in her. Something she wanted to tell Isha, but wasn't sure how.
Isha put her cup down. "Is something wrong, my child?"
Mehlendri visibly hesitated before speaking. "Mother, I was…confronted by a Harlequin some cycles ago, before you arrived."
Isha's eyebrows rose. "One of my brother's worshippers?"
"Yes. He slipped into Iyanden despite the lockdown on the Webway gates," Mehlendri admitted, eyebrows knitting together in irritation. "We haven't been able to figure out how. But he also met me, and…gave me something. He said it was a message from Cegorach. He claimed it was for you."
The ability to use Webway portals in ways no one else understood, supposedly having a message from Cegorach, the knowledge of where she was despite Iyanden's attempts to conceal that knowledge…
"Not just a worshipper, then," Isha murmured thoughtfully. "A Chosen."
None of the Pantheon had been able to make new Chosen since Asuryan's Edict had been established, but that Edict no longer applied.
And Cegorach had always worked fast. Even before he had been Cegorach at all.
"Very well, show me this message," Isha commanded, concealing her trepidation.
To hear from one of her family for the first time since the Fall was a tempting thought, but this was Cegorach.
The Mad God.
The Broken God.
She loved him as she did every member of the family save Khaine, but she would be lying if there was not some anxiety to the thought of what he might say.
Would he blame her or offer her comfort? Mock her decision to run to the Emperor or understand that she had no choice?
Well. Time to find out.
Mehlendri produced a small wraithbone cylinder and held it out in front of her, the top flowing open to reveal an eerie black crystal inside.
The Fleetmaster seemed reluctant to touch the thing, so Isha reached down and plucked it out with slender fingers, holding it in her palm for a single moment.
Then the crystal shattered…and so did the world around her.
Fragments of reality spun around her in a blur, Isha alone standing still in the eye of the storm, as the world shifted and swirled in a kaleidoscope.
Slowly, the shards slowed and the world reassembled itself, but she was no longer in Mehlendri's rooms, and the Fleetmaster herself was gone.
Instead, she was in a library.
Not the Black Library, no. This was no labyrinth of knowledge, filled with wonders and horrors, lies and truths that could drive even gods to madness if they were not careful.
It was a simple room, with polished wooden walls and shelves stacked with books. The floor was carpeted, and there was a fireplace in the corner, crackling merrily with armchairs around it.
It could almost have been a human library, but there were differences. The shelves were not made by hand and by tools, separate from the walls. The walls themselves had been shaped, grown, in such a way that there were grooves in them where books could be stacked. The books themselves looked as they might to any human, but Isha knew that if she pulled one off the shelves and opened it, shimmering images and light would emerge from the pages.
The chairs themselves grew out of the floor, and the flames in the fireplace were not the red, orange and yellow of ordinary fire, but blue and green, ignited by a spell.
This was the kind of library her children had built before the War in Heaven when their understanding of warpcraft had been shaped only through their discoveries and culture, rather than the teachings of the Old Ones when they had still been innocent.
Before her children had been taken apart and then put back together again as weapons.
Isha closed her eyes for a moment and sighed.
When she opened them again, someone was sitting in one of the chairs.
It was an Aeldari man with long grey hair, wearing robes the colour of freshly fallen snow, a staff leaning against his chair and a book in his hands which he was reading.
"Hello, brother," Isha said quietly as she sat down in the chair opposite him.
The man looked up, and through a silver metallic mask moulded to his face, Isha saw a calm, studious pair of eyes, shining with a piercing intellect looking back at her. The eternal smile on the Jester's mask changed, becoming smaller yet more genuine and for a brief instant, the broken jigsaw puzzle that was Cegorach reassembled itself into Hoeth at the sight of his sister.
And then the moment passed as suddenly as it had come. The white robes became a mess of shifting colours, flickering through shades no mortal had ever seen. The lips of the silver mask that was not a mask split into a wide and jagged smile, baring broken teeth. The soft grey eyes glowed with a bright light that obscured their iris and sclera, and the staff against his chair changed shape, from a simple but well-maintained length of white wood to a twisted, misshapen thing that looked as if it had been shattered and crudely strapped back together with several pieces missing.
"Sister Isha!" Came the cackle, a discordant sound that would have made mortal ears bleed that echoed across multiple planes of reality. "How good to see you again!"
Hoeth shattered like glass, and once more Cegorach stood in his place.
Isha sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It is good to see you too, Cegorach." And she meant it. Mad and broken he might be, with schemes that infuriated her beyond measure, but Cegorach was still family.
"I must say, I never expected you to run to a mon-keigh god of all people," Cegorach grinned. "When he was younger, perhaps, but he is such a violent brute these days! Hardly the sort of refined companion I would expect a delicate maiden such as yourself to keep."
"Don't call them mon-keigh," Isha said sharply. Honestly, the way her family and children went on, one would think calling other races by the names they wished to be called instead of some derogatory moniker was akin to fighting one of the Yngir, not one of the simplest things in the world.
It was especially irritating coming from Cegorach because she knew he didn't truly care, he was just doing it to annoy her.
Cegorach gave an insolent shrug, carelessly tossing away the book he had been reading into the flames. "Oh no need to be so sensitive, there aren't even any humans present! You always were a bleeding heart! They should have called your worshippers the Order of the Bleeding Heart! AhaHAahaAHA!"
Isha rolled her eyes, crossing one leg over the other as Cegorach laughed at his own joke. "Very funny."
"Thank you! I try!"
"As for why I went to the Emperor, I had little choice," Isha continued. "I could not dare to approach a Webway portal without potentially giving the Chaos Gods a way to breach it, and he alone was powerful enough to shield me from the Four. I suspected he might kill or imprison me, but I decided that even if he did, it was better than being Slaanesh's meal or Nurgle's slave."
Not that she needed to say any of it. Cegorach might be mad, but he was as brilliant as Hoeth had ever been. No doubt he had already guessed her reasoning the moment he had heard her whispers into the Warp and realized she was alive and where she was.
The Clown God chuckled again, and the library twisted around them, the angles and dimensions changing into bizarre configurations, the fire becoming a kaleidoscope of colours that reflected his robes.
"Still! You two make such a bizarre pair, it's hilarious! Maybe I should write a play about it!" A quill and manuscript appeared in his hands, the former dancing over the other in rapid strokes. "I bet it would be my biggest hit!"
Isha groaned, knowing she shouldn't rise to the bait but unable to help herself. "Must you?"
"Of course! An artist's work is never done, you know."
Isha let it go. They had other other things to discuss, in any case.
"Your Chosen told Mehlendri that you had a message for me. I assume you didn't bring me here just to talk about your next play."
"How hurtful! Can't I just want to catch up with my long lost sister?"
"Cegorach," Isha said pointedly.
"No sense of humour at all, just like your father," Cegorach sighed, even as Isha bristled and forced herself not to throw a spear at him. But he focused on her completely at last, his eyes burning with insanity and yet also an intense focus.
"The Lords of Ruin will not take your escape lying down," He warned, and for a moment, Hoeth shone through once more. "All that you have seen so far is not even their opening moves. They are simply waiting for the right opportunity, especially the Youngest. The Six are coming for you, Isha."
Isha scowled. The Six…those vile accursed traitors. Even most of the pleasure cults remained her children, twisted and vile as they might be, but The Six...she disowned them in every way, as they had disowned her. "I thought they would be sleeping, lost in a haze of their hedonism."
"They would have! But your escape has changed things. The story has changed, and we gods change with it, for are we not stories ourselves?"
Isha nodded curtly. "Thank you, Cegorach. I will be prepared."
Cegorach's twisted smile returned. "Of course! Is it not the duty of the fool to warn his queen?"
"It is," Isha acknowledged.
"And so I must fulfill my duties! But remember, oh Everqueen, I am your fool, not your friend! What I say, you will not always wish to hear, but hear it you must!"
"Every monarch needs a fool," Isha agreed. "I will hear what you have to say, Cegorach. But I will not forget what you are, either."
Hoeth had been kind and wise and good, a god of knowledge and sorcery.
But Cegorach was a god of madness, of cruelty as much as of jest, and he had left a trail of innocent blood and slaughter across the stars.
He was family, and she loved him, but she did not trust him.
Not always, and not in all things.
But the Laughing God did not seem to take offence. "Good!" He giggled. "We shall talk with each other again soon, but for now, I bid you farewell!"
And then he was gone. The whole library was gone, and Isha once more stood in Mehlendri's chambers as if nothing had happened at all. Hardly a moment had passed. The black crystal had vanished, with no sign of it or its fragments anywhere to be seen.
"Your Serenity?" The Fleetmaster asked, eyeing her concernedly as Isha sighed wearily. "Is something wrong?"
Isha shook her head wearily. "No, nothing. I just… talked with Cegorach."
Mehlendri seemed puzzled, but she didn't question it. "What did he say?" She ventured.
"He gave me a warning," Isha murmured, scowling at the thought of The Six. "Come. I must speak to the rest of the council. We have work to do."
Author's Note: Thank you to Silvan Eldar and WriterAnt for editing this chapter, and Azrubel for helping me work out what Cegorach's voice should be like.
Proto-Eldar warpcraft and architecture were based on this excerpt from White Dwarf 127.
As far as is possible to tell, the Eldar have always been a psychic race. This manifests itself in a variety of unusual talents. One natural ability which is common to many Eldar is called 'psychomorphism' by the human Xenobiologists of the Imperium. In crude terms, this gives them the ability to shape matter and create simple artefacts from raw materials. More complex things can be made by several individuals working together or with the aid of forging machines to enhance the creative process.
Eldar can also move small objects by a form of psychokinesis, and it is by this means that they build their most sophisticated devices.
Some Eldar can influence the structure of growing matter by a form of empathic telepathy. This empathic ability may have been particularly important during the early development of the Eldar race, enabling them to promote the fruitfulness of edible crops and reshape the growth of trees to make simple shelters. During their primitive evolutionary stage, the Eldar undoubtedly benefited greatly from these skills. The first Eldar villages and towns are supposed to have been living structures grown from trees, often covering many square miles and reaching high into the air. Structures like this can still be found in worlds colonised by the Eldar in later times.