"The Fall ended everything for me, my greatness and depravity. Our cities broke, and our people shattered. I will never forget when my soul's humming was replaced by the birth scream of She-Who-Thirsts. I can not, I should not." - writing by Fara-Phasalian
There were many harbours on and from his home. Some like the Found-Palm-Of-Mora-heg were a center of voices from the outside world and a clustering of wishes. Of course, it had been designed to host such things in all its grandeur… the Western-Port couldn't claim the same.
Locked away on the far starboard side of the ship and too close to the Found-Palm-Of-Mora-heg for anyone to choose it over its grander sibling. Calrion involuntarily felt the haste with which old bonesingers had sung this harbour into being.
They had sung the wraithbone over the valley's cliff edge, in the flowing shape of a painter's version of a cloud. The hard surface saving them all from falling to a certain death had the swirling engravings of their song.
Like most of the places he visited on the craftworld he had already been here before and many times at that. The same old roads he took never led somewhere new.
Living up to his reputation as predictable gave him mixed feelings but his home was enough for him.
For the one most urgent to tease him of this, the craftworld was seemingly not enough for him.
Vallin was his name, though he insisted that it was Vallanullth. One trip beyond the safety of their craftworld and he thought it was his right to throw away his child's name. Maybe it wasn't that bad but it was the first thing the eldar had told him when they met again to Vallin's homecoming.
Calrion just knows he dyed his Asurs tuft away. It was an old tradition to let the child's white hair grow away with time, and Calrion felt like he was the only one humble enough to follow it.
Lost like a leaf separated from its tree Calrion had tumbled until he lost his judgement and options and was stranded with his friend.
Now sitting upon a crate in this humble harbour he pretended to listen to his friends' bravado. Calrion knew it was not polite but all he could think was about the mistreatment of his seer garments, they deserved better! And his own name, and if others would like to learn it again.
"So what do you think?" Vallin swung out like a performer for his audience of one.
"Eh..? I mean… sorry I didn't hear the question" His friend could have spluttered cold water in his face and gotten the same reaction. Vallins confidence dropped as his shoulders did but a challenging brow was lifted.
"Was it good that I almost traded my soul stone for the most exquisite dagger I ever saw? In their debauchery, the Drukhari sure know how to-"
"YOU ALMOST PARTED WITH YOUR SOUL STONE? That is- that is…is…!" Calrion shrieked."Your mind was forgotten on Sami-Han!?" Flying to his feet with such speed a less graceful species would have just crashed into his friend.
It wasn't sacrilege that had been committed, it was breaking every survival instinct and decency their whole people depended on. The lifeline in the noble form of a jewel was his right to be birthed. And it was more than a salvation from ancestral sin, it was the Asuryani's right to their home and what made them a people.
Burning dread and fear were met by a burst of laughter that would have folded Vallin over hadn't Calrion forced him upright.
Through the layers of protection, something slipped between Calrions fingers.
"The dull mind falls for the simplest of ruse" Vallin tried to say between his sobbing laughs.
Calrions own soulstone felt like it wanted to pop out of its bezel and shoot Vallin in the face.
"Please, show it" Calrion gritted as weak as Vallin had stabbed him in the lung.
The laughing eldar turned into a grinning one if a bit pestered. The eldar with a grievance turned into a relieved one when Vallin fished the perfectly oval gemstone from under his coat.
Truth be told, he would have felt the absence of the saving gem the moment they met. Calrion just needed to see it with his own two eyes.
"It was fun and you wouldn't wake up to anything else" His voice got steadier as the laughing was railed in.
"Do not ever joke of that realm Vallanulth, could you even return if lacking what makes us Asuryani?"
Pushing Calrions hands away, he walked past him in a swing.
"Do you know how much you sound like my father?"
"That's a bad thing?" Calrion mumbled to himself.
Vallin's little dance stopped at the centre of the harbour, where a fountain or statue that should have adorned a hole took place instead. The moon shape cut through their layer of the craftworld, making it a window to the world below.
He knew Vallin hadn't come back for him. The thousands upon thousands of skyways and bridges connected to countless high towers like the web of a master seamstress. Sprawling out like a seven-pointed star, its complexities grew the more one looked at it. This brought out the beauty of the city, as every string in the web glowed with light, it looked like it would bleed out with vim. There was another light in the city, one Calrion constantly felt but couldn't be seen with material eyes. So many eldar souls gathered and made a feast of glimmers only a craftworld could protect. Looking up to Vallin, Calrion saw some of the fluorescent shimmers of the city reach them this far up.
"How have you not grown sick of this ship?" Vallin threw out with equal bite as perplexedness.
Joining him at the edge of a new world, Callin tried to come up with a new response to the resurfaced question. It chained them together and was the only real thing they spoke of anymore.
"Who needs out me there? Vallin- I have a place here, I-I'm not gonna throw it away because my spirit is possessed to flee" Calrion asked when he sat down, staring at the interior rim of the reeling. What the art told him was hazed and mingled, his powers listened to the lingering feelings of the long-gone maker. Staring into the drawn eyes of Eldanesh and Isha instead of Vallnullths made the stiff question come out easier.
"And Fermia and I are honourless? Son of Mora-heg?"
He sighed, invoking the name of their friend mingling with distant stars and the goddess of fate, both gone for what felt like five lifetimes. Vallin sank deeper into his lean.
He was tired and angry if he humorously brought up his lineage. Though Mora-heg and Fara-Phasalian weren't too different in Calrion's humble opinion.
Calrion looked at him and took all that his friend couldn't say. Off this damn ship, that it was safer than the void was an open lie he knew since childhood. Calrion also knew it, he just chose the dignified way to handle it.
"You're doing it again" Vallin replied to his silence.
Yes… he had…
"I didn't mean that you're honourless but other than danger what's different out there? Fermia forgot us, that's what leaving does"
"Other than paddling through an ocean of seers what terrible danger is she in? If you fare better on craftworld Ulthwe and send envoys"
"Did you know she promised me we'd maintain our bond through messages but I lay discarded as well" Calrion lied of the first part and the second they both knew was anything but a guess.
"You live in your head like a child dreams. We are friends, that will last forever" from smoulder to blaze Vallin burst back to life, words like stones thrown at Calrion.
As if the metaphorical stone hit him in the head, he straightened up. Had his friend been Lanmar and a few passings earlier he'd shout back of who actually lived in a child's dream. Tonight had taught him better.
"Have you ever been my friend, Vallin? Whatever I did to make you leave, I will repent".
"It's Vallanullth, Callin" the young eldar said. He must have felt very important saying that, the high chest gave it away. A little smile, a flicker in the corner of his mouth gave it away. The child who chosen him as a friend showed himself.
"I was named Calrion this night but I don't think I will live with it for long" He didn't know why he said that, or more precisely, why he mumbled it.
Vallin's face didn't change a hairline from before but Calrion felt the heat of the anger vanish.
Vallin closed his soul but opened his mouth to speak, ironically this barred Calrion from knowing what was on his heart.
A third soul was with them. Calrion felt it first but Vallin was soon to stare in unapologetic shock at the Calrion-looking eldar now present.
Calrion smiled goodbye to the eldar he had called friend. It was a good enough smile for Vallin's own departure, from Calrion and the craftworld.
Ulrion didn't need to call him to come as Laconia had, Calrion was already in front of him. He wanted his full attention and obeying was as automatic as the fear impulse. Not that it made Calrion any more self-respecting.
"You shouldn't be here" the ranger declared like a simple answer to a slow pupil. Skipping the wait for an answer Ulrion stalked back they way he came.
Literally following his father's footsteps, they left the harbour.
Calrion didn't have a response. Putting effort into asking what he wanted instead.
"Have you missed Sami-hann? I imagine it's warmer than the void" Clarion bravely tried to unfreeze the air.
Studying Ulrion face for a crack in that polished white ice he was rewarded with nothing.
"Wind carried me to you, let your voice carry my gaze, Youngest-king" Calrion recited from an old poem about the falcon summoned to Eldaneshes court, it was common writing to cite when meeting in the formal.
But Ulrions soul didn't spark to that one either.
If Callin didn't know if his speaking was an irritation or a birdsong it was safer to assume to former and be quieter. Calrion continued this tradition.
"Lanmar wants you to return. What he has to say is between the two of you" he said with little regard for the dagger that sunk into Calrion.
The young eldar stopped in the middle of his steps, not like the proud stag, more in flimsy step.
"I can't"
"Then conjure the courage, I don't have faith in a farseers patience and less in Lanmars".
"Why do Fara-Phasalian ask for me?" Calrion couldn't imagine Fara-Kalamar going through Ulrion and Ulrion anything but sneering at that farseer.
"That's for you to find out," The ranger said and gestured that they continue forward. Ohh he would rather be lost in the void than speak to them now.
"She and I will have to wait… I-I have been tasked a duty" He didn't like to decline her but the funeral wouldn't wait for him. He thought he would need to argue for it but his father gave him a perusal glance. "What have your friend said of your clothes?" Was the only thing he said.
"Well… not much, he already knew" his eyes flickered between the seer garment and as far away from Ulrions face as he could.
"Was that wise? Well regardless" he left with a hand gesture, this one to signal 'on your head be it'.