Editing Seculos Attendous

Another bit of writing by the [[user:Creed of Heresy|heretical creed]] involving an eldar autarch and my Inquisitor of the Seculos Attendous.  It's gonna get heretical here pretty quick.  Not sure what possessed me to write this, really, just felt like it.  Yeah.  Figured I'd go with an autarch because farseers and banshees are overdone, so...
Enjoy, fa/tg/uys.
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++LOGFILE1++

++LEVEL STAT: 1 [INITIAL]++

++INTERROGATOR:  INQUISITOR ELGIUS MELLIS, ORDO SECULOS ATTENDOUS++

++SUBJECT:  XENO CLASSIFICATION “ELDAR”  SUBCLASS “AUTARCH”++

++ADDITIONAL PERSONNEL:  SECURITY ESCORT [TWO (2) SHADERUS V PDF “NIGHT REAPER” TROOPERS], MEDICAE STAFF [ONE (1) XENOBIOLOGIST, ONE (1) XENOLOGICAL-ANATOMY SURGICAL SPECIALIST, RETINUE-LEVEL CLEARANCE]++

++COMMENCE INTERROGATION LOGFILE++

++COMMENCE VIDEO LOGFILE++

++WARNING!  OFF-SITE BACKUP CONNECTIONS NON-RESPONSIVE, ERROR CODE 515++


The room was cold, gray steel, riveted plates configured into a cruel, box-like shape, with nothing more than a single flourescent light panel set into the ceiling overhead which cast a harsh light throughout the cell.  Within sat a female, taller than most humans, dressed in a close-fitting bodysuit that seemed to reflect the light rather prominently from the more feminine curvatures of her form.  Her legs were tucked beneath her upon the floor, for there was no other surface for her to sit on.  Her fair skin was matched by eyes as green as flawlessly-cut emeralds, inhumanly-pointed ears, and features too angular and precise.  Soft, pale lips were set in a placid non-expression, her features betraying no emotion.  Slender eyebrows, neon-blue with green tints and streaks to match the color of her long, silky, razor-straight hair rose in only the mildest expression of curiosity as a quintet of humans stepped into the room.  Two she recognized, doctors of some kind, who had studied her, removed her armor and weapons from her, washed the blood-rune of her war-mask from her forehead, and clad her in this basic outfit.  While not as comfortable as even the most haphazard adornments of her kind, it was more comfortable than anything she would have thought the mon-keigh could have ever hoped to produce.

Her gaze swept the three she did not recognize.  Two were clad in long, black coats set with symmetrical, glossy stripes from shoulders to wrists, collar to hem, some of which overlapped, especially over the torso.  Underneath they wore fitted plate armor of some kind that looked like lighter versions of the armor usually worn by the expendable cannon-fodder that made up most of the corpse-emperor's armies, yet somehow it looked much more solid.  Their faces were concealed behind blank, armored masks, whose only defining characteristics were their rounded, feature-hugging shape, thin grilles along the jaw, presumably for vox-casters, a thin arch-shaped respirator piece at the lower-front, and white-tinted, blade-shaped eye-ports.  Functional, utilitarian helmets covered the rest of their heads, loose black-and-gray visual-camouflaged pants covered their legs (also set with the gloss-material strips along what she knew to be the locations of major arteries, blood vessels, and their knees), and heavy black, metal-plated boots covered their feet.  Black gloves covered their hands, with thin metal strips set along the webbing of their bone structure.  She also knew about these; they contained long, thin, piercing metal blades that were coated in neurotoxins.  In their hands, they carried deceptively light laser weaponry, which, as she had seen, were far more powerful than the weaponry she had come to expect from the mon-keigh.  Affixed at the angles of the bottom of the barrel were a pair of right-angled bayonets that gave off a faintly glowing sheen.  Power fields.  Small cords connected from their hilts to the middle of the weapon, and the rifles themselves were painted in camouflage that matched their fatigues.

Other than this, they also carried a pair of long combat knives of the same kind of brutally simplistic, utilitarian shape typically associated with these lesser, “evolved” creatures, secured into sheathes upon their left shoulders and left hips.  They wore void-black utility belts, and she could also see that set along the inner sides of their coats were more pockets and pouches containing Isha knew what.  The only other identifying characteristic were painfully-angled markings upon their right shoulders, shaped like white triangles with disconnected lines set outside the lines of the triangle for each soldier.  What they meant, only Bloody-Handed Khaine knew, and she cared not to learn.

Finally, her eyes settled on the only one whose features she could see.  There was a strange lack of the usual scorn, contempt, arrogance, and brutish savagery in his expression, and if anything, he seemed almost apathetic, regarding her with the same lack of interest as she might regard any of his kin, worthless as they all were in comparison to her own martial experience and intricate knowledge of the most elevated forms of warfare and strategy.  He was dressed in a coat similar to that of his flanking guards, who stepped precisely aside and pointed their weapons at her, but unlike them, he had no armor underneath, nor any of the glossed strips.  His pants were simple black, as was the shirt over his torso.  His hands were ungloved, and his head devoid of any helm.  His skin was pale as her own, perhaps even more so, and his eyes were black as the void itself, so that she did not know when pupil ended and iris began.  His equally dark hair was long, tied back with a single, simple band to keep it from his face, and his coat incorporated a hood and a tall collar that was drawn down to rest both sides of the collar over his shoulders.  A short coat of dark stubble covered the lower portion of his face, and his features were, for a mon-keigh, almost soft, his nose straight yet lacking sharp definition, his chin lightly dimpled, his jaw shallowly sloped and his cheeks set higher than the average mon-keigh, but then, she didn't exactly tend to notice features too often on his kind, anyway.  The only time she noticed them was when their blood painted her armor and sword.  She scanned him quickly.  He had no weapons that were visible, and other than a pair of boots similar in their brutal functionality as those of the two soldiers accompanying him, he had nothing else upon his person.

Or so she thought, until her eyes drifted lower to his chest.  There, from a thin, gray metal chain, hung a small pearl, perfectly-rounded, which swirled before her eyes with hues of blacks, whites, and grays.  As she tried to focus her gaze upon it, she found it becoming harder to look at it, until the world began to spin and nausea began to overwhelm her.  Her witchsight skittered from it, refusing to look upon it.  It was both dark and light at once, overwhelmingly brilliant and yet despairingly devoid all at once, some terrible contradiction that hurt her with its very nature.  Yet for its awful, beautiful, comforting malice, it held no taint, no sinister touch of the immaterium.

The mon-keigh's lips tugged into the faintest expression of amusement, as if a tired parent indulging the humor of an insistent child.

“Do not look too close.  Few like what they see when they do,” he said, his vocal pitch a low tone.  The eldar merely watched him as he glanced at the “medical” personnel, such as they could be called with their sadistically simplistic approaches.  “You may leave,” he intoned, and the “doctors” left, the door sliding shut behind them with a soft swish.  “Technically speaking,” he continued, this time to her as he stood before her, his hands sliding into the pockets of his coat, “I do not need them, either.”  He jerked his head behind him in the direction of the two guards.  “But I am curious to see if an autarch of the eldar will estimate her chances of overwhelming an unarmed man with only two guards in the room.  Are they enough, I wonder, to give you pause?”

She did not answer, merely kept her gaze trained coolly upon him, betraying nothing, knowing that one of the most crucial strategies was to never betray any information to an enemy, save the information you made up yourself or allowed them to see for your own purposes.  The human stared back, his moderately-thin, gently-curving eyebrows raising slightly.  Then he shrugged slowly.

“I know the answer already.  It doesn't take a psyker for one to know you wonder why you are caged in a room, yet unbound, unshackled, unhindered, with your interrogator unarmed and accompanied by a piecemeal force at best.  You can only assume I am goading you into attacking, to make you call my bluff, so that I may have a personal excuse to do whatever it is I intend to do.  You do not do so, because you think that I would not be so stupid, and that there must be something giving me such security as to think I can be in such a situation with an autarch, as they call you, with such a lack of concern.  Am I far off the mark?”

Again, she did not answer, but her eyes merely narrowed.  The most she was willing to give in reply.  He had nailed it.  There was something about him that unsettled her, and had done so even before she had gazed upon the swirling pearl he wore about his neck.  She tried to look upon him more intensely, beyond mere sight of the eye, but found that doing so hurt.  It burned and yet it froze her all at once when she did, like bathing herself in scaldingly-hot ice.  It was a jarring contradiction, and she felt repelled by the sensation for more than just the psychic discomfort it caused.  She knew, however, just what it meant.  His comment about psykers was not one to be taken casually.  They both knew what he was.  But the nature of that which she could see...it disturbed her, greatly.  He eyed her for a moment, then gestured to the two guards.
“You may leave as well.  Remain outside the door.  If I call for help, do not attempt to do so on your own.  Call all security forces, wait for reinforcements.”

The two soldiers nodded in unison and, without a word, stepped out of the room, the door swishing shut once more.  The mon-keigh turned his attention back on her, then slid his hands from his pockets, gesturing with a finger.
“Stand.”

She did not.  He waited, then shrugged.

“If not of own accord...” he muttered, then flicked his finger again.  This time, it was not a bidding gesture.  Instead, a sudden surge of eldritch energy wrapped around her and hauled her bodily up.  The sensation was overpowering, and her eyes flew open in shock.  She tried to resist, her own innate psychic abilities, not to be dismissed lightly, flaring to try to resist but even her own highly-disciplined might was cowed and beaten into submission with such casual dismissal that it sent her mind reeling, mentally bowing to him as surely as an eager slave would to a demanding master.  She felt herself bodily lifted and slammed back into the wall with such force that the air was driven from her in a graceless whoosh, her face scrunching and mouth opening wide in a silent cry of shock and pain.  She stared at him, her eyes widening as he approached.  Her arms were spread out from her body, her legs pinned tightly together, an enormous weight pressing against her, crushing her.  She felt as if she were going to collapse into a single molecule of matter, until the pressure relented as suddenly as it began, but lingering enough to keep her trapped.  A glowing gray corona of energy rippled from him.  He brought a hand up, pulling the hood up over his head, and the corona faded, and she saw thin filaments of energy pulsing under the hood's material.  The mon-keigh psyker approached and stood before her, his posture relaxed.

“Now, I will ask you questions.  You will answer of your own accord, or I will force the answers from you.  Doing so will bring you great pain, and serve you no gains.  I will not give you any further warning.  Do you understand?”
She refused to relent so easily, and she merely glared at him.  She was a warrior with few peers, and those peers were great indeed in their prowess.  Submission would not come so easily-

Suddenly a great hand reached into her very soul and ripped a small, tiny piece from her.  She screamed, but it was not a scream without purpose.

“Yes!” she shrieked, the word unbidden, but laced with agony, as if he had torn her skin from her physical form.  He merely smiled.

“Good.  Now, what is your name?”

She glared at him, refusing to respond.  That would not be enough to break her, not enough to-
“ALISSANA!!” she shrieked again, the pain even greater, as the mental force tore another piece from her soul and forced it up to her lips unbidden.  She spasmed, the psychic pain sending shockwaves down her spine, her eyes and jaws clenching shut as the agony hurled through her over and over, dimming slowly but surely, returning her faculties to her once again.
“You're a warrior.  A leader, in fact, I know.  You led the assault on the shrine.  If it is any comfort, it was not any failing of your own that it ended in such abysmal failure.  I doubt even your farseers could have glimpsed the truth of what was to happen.  You were doomed to fail before you even set foot on Shaderus VI.  Not all plots and plans come from your seers.  Some come from great and terrible sources, and some come from forces of a different order.  Some things are meant to happen because sometimes, the pawns have ideas of their own.”

She gasped heavily, her body screaming for air, as she tried to process what he was saying.  There was the uncomfortable ring of truth to his words, but she refused to follow it.  His truth was not the truth, and she knew deep down this was the actual truth.

“You're...not as clever as you think, mon-keigh,” she gasped, her authoritative, confident voice now ragged, rasping.  She coughed, struggling to regain control over herself once again, and running through the mantras of calming, command, and control quickly in her head, steadily holding herself in dominion of her mind and body once more.
“I only think myself as clever as I am, no more, no less,” he replied dismissively.  “I know my limits, Alissana, but your kind...they have a much harder time learning their own.”

“What do you know of the eldar?” she spat contemptuously.  “Typical arrogance of your kind!  Laying claim to that which you do not deserve, speaking of things so casually-”

“Arrogance is not the acceptance of fact, arrogance is denying fact when it's shoved right in your face,” the human snapped over her words with a vehemence that suddenly cowed her into silence.  She stared into his eyes, wreathed now by shadow from his hood, but she could see them as readily as she could see the brutish light coming from above.  There was a hardness in them that came close to a level of strength that matched the heights of her own kind, and while she was not used to human expressions beyond those of fear and pain and anguish, it was beyond what she knew to be the norms of their kind.  He drew a deep breath, and seemed to calm as quickly as he had flared with anger.

“I am not an ignorant savage, as I am sure you think me, as would all your kind in your position.  Do not think your presuppositions to be so readily satisfied, because there is more I have had to look into, and to learn, and understand, than even most of your kin could dare hope to know.”

Alissana was quiet, and starting to feel a heightened sense of discomfort that wasn't born of physical or spiritual origins.  He was right...there was something different about him, and she DIDN'T know what it was.  That was what was making her feel so uncomfortable, she realized.  This was not something she had planned for, nor had ever been informed of.  Had the farseers left this out, had she been given insufficient knowledge?  Had she missed something in her experiences, far-reaching as they had been, to ensure she lacked insight necessary for this situation?  The questions chased themselves around one another in her head; there were no answers that came forth.

“I know what you were after.  That is not a concern.  What IS my concern is WHY you were after it.”

Suddenly, panic streaked through her like a white-hot lance.  He could so easily extract simple information from her while inducing such debilitating agony to her soul.  Such information, however, was not something she could surrender.  The danger such knowledge presented transcended her own existence.  It affected the lives of over a million eldar, and millions more souls within the infinity circuit of her Craftworld, Ayatolia, orbiting a mere handful of light-years outside of the Shaderus system's outermost debris sphere.

“You cannot force that information from me,” she whispered, eyes wide with fear, but also with grim, steadfast determination.  The human's eyes narrowed.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the human whispered in return, seemingly a non-sequitur.  “I am Inquisitor Elgius Mellis.  Your farseers do not know my name, and I will not let them, either.”

The implied threat sent a chill of fear through her, but fear was not enough to break her, nor was even the threat of such intense agony.  Alissana had a strength of will great even by the rigid standards of her kin.  She had faced the urgings to war, and undertaken them all in all the aspects of the Bloody-Handed One, and always found herself able to turn away each time, never letting even the call of Khaine himself at its loudest and most persistent, and in all its facets, overwhelm and dominate her.  This human could not hope to match that.

“I will not...no matter what you do,” she whispered softly, and despite the fact she knew her fear was showing in her face, so too was her determination, her strength of will.  “You will have to flay me to pieces, and destroy me utterly, in your quest to gain that knowledge.  Too much hangs in the balance.  Too many lives, the sum of which outweigh my tiny speck of an existence too many times over to number...as many times as there are stars in the void.  All the pain and agony you can bring to me, even the damnation of my soul to She Who Thirsts herself, would not be enough to pull that knowledge from me.”  A shudder ran down her body, and a tremor quavered her voice at the vocalization of she and her race's most hated enemy and greatest bane, but her resolve remained upon her face and within her eyes, harder than the armor of the Emperor Himself.  Elgius stared at her evenly, stepping a half-pace closer, now a mere arm's length from her.  He said nothing, and seemed to do nothing, but suddenly, the immense force tore at her.  Alissana shrieked, wailed like the Banshee she had once been, cried out her thousands of agonies to the fabric of the universe and the empyrean hell beyond, her body thrashing and bucking so violently that had his psychic might not held her so steady, she would have shattered through the sheer force of her convulsions.  Her eyes rolled wildly in her sockets, and she felt tears pour down her face and crystallize almost immediately, breaking from her pale skin as she vibrated enough to generate heat through friction that sent her skin burning.  The soul-hand tore at her, pried at the very core of her being with immeasurable force, but her willpower refused to relent even as it was battered with the worst agonies she could never have begun to conceive of in her darkest, most tormenting nightmares.  The touch of the Bloody-Handed One felt soothing and warm by comparison.  She felt herself begin to fall apart at some fundamental level.  Parts of her, of her personality, of her experience and knowledge, were coming loose and threatening to be cast into oblivion.  The pull of her spiritstone was as frail and weak as the gravitational pull of a pebble in comparison to the tearing engulfing her spirit.

But she would not let go.  She clutched that information with all her might and even more that she could not have possibly had.  Against all the forces of the universe itself, it seemed like, she held fast, and clutched at it, even as she howled to a pain that was beyond verbiage.  Just as she felt herself beginning to splinter, the pressure stopped.  She was left bucking violently, uncontrollably, her body randomly acting in whatever way chaos itself demanded, but yet something surrounded her, enveloped her, and pushed the pieces of her mind back together, sewing them up with cold, clinical efficiency.  Tears streamed down her face, her expression a permanent mask of indescribable anguish, but that too was terminating in rapid order, her body calming far too fast for it to be her own doing.  She came back together, and her vision, vivid and red with pain, began to clear.  Sobbing in equal parts torment and victory, she forced her eyes to focus on the mon-kei-  no...the CREATURE before her.  His eyes were hard as obsidian and black as such, too, his fists clenched, and that was when she saw the room was filled with crackling bolts of eldritch, sorcerous energy that were frozen in time, though they vibrated with an urgent need to be unshackled.

Elgius hissed softly, and the corona about him, now blinding in its intensity, faded away, the conduits withing his hood flaring to replace the corona with its vibrance, the energies throughout the room fading to wisps and disappearing entirely from existence, only a few remaining to snake forth, tracing across her, piercing into her eyes.  She screamed, expecting pain, but stopped abruptly as instead she felt soothing relief, the last vestiges of the pain, and the trauma it induced to her soul itself fading as if he were the most masterful of Isha's healers.

There were a few moments of silence that followed, broken only by her gasping, hiccuping, shuddering breath and his slow, measured, heavy panting.  She became aware of a trivial, dull ache in her hands, and turned her head.  Despite the firm hold the Inquisitor had held upon her, her radiantly-painted green-and-blue nails had pressed into her palms until her blood had flowed from her palms, crystallizing as it spattered upon the ground.  Taking a deep, shivering gasp of breath, she turned her eyes up into his own.

“I...will not...yield...” she whispered, her voice hoarse and grating, her speech threads tattered by the vocalization of her torture.  “A thousand times you may do this...I will...not yield.”  She managed to rasp a bitter, but triumphant laugh...or so she wanted.  All that came out with a choking sob.

“Clearly,” Elgius murmured, his own voice unstrained, and devoid of concern, as if he had hit an expected snag.  Something about the dispassionate statement send another thrill of fear through her.  She'd already learned to not dare hope to think he held a bluff.  What other hells did he have in plan for her?  Pain she could endure, it was a tangible, but what else did he have at his disposal?

“What...what now?” she asked, her voice suddenly clear once more.  The empyrean fingers left her and faded to non-existence.  She realized she did not want to know.  Her arrogance was gone.  She was facing a torment greater than anything she had ever imagined, even when staring down the tender mercies of She Who Thirsted.  She had no assurance, now.  Nothing but her need to protect her kin, to prevent their mass-annihilation at the brutal, savage, primitive, hammering hands of the slaves of the corpse-emperor, and the feast of souls to the Great Enemy that it would cause.

“I have many techniques,” came the vague reply.  She stared at him, eyes wide with horrified expectation.  She realized her fingers were still biting into her palms.  She didn't relax them.  It was some minor distraction, something she desperately needed now, no matter how small and trivial it was.  But what he said next stunned her so much that her hands relaxed all on their own.

“The truth, however, is the most potent.”  He stepped forwards once more, and now there was no distance between them.  His hands reached up and cupped her face and suddenly she was filled with a feeling she could describe.  She felt primitive for the first time in her entire existence.  Warm, cold, assured, threatened, confident, defeated, dead, alive, angry, happy, immense, small, understanding, and ignorant.  A kaleidoscope of feelings all whispered through her, and then their eyes locked.  The world around them grew brilliant with colors undefinable.  She recognized them, in a distant way through only the most distant of allowances of experience, as the unreal, immaterial swirls of the warp itself.  Her mouth dropped open in a great terror, but suddenly the emotional turmoil began...and yet, for all the chaos, there was an order.
There was a conquest to it.

She felt herself alone, in a great, empty space, and a force before her.  She stepped towards it, and it took shape.  It was the mon-keigh.  The hellish nightmare reality of the immaterium swirled about them, and rushed for her, trillions of slavering daemons, horrible and grotesque and yet terribly beautiful and lustful reaching for her.  She felt her heart race, and a surge of need filled her.  She was overwhelmed by a terrible lust, a need to surrender to such base, carnal urges that she had never let herself entertain.  The Elgius-formed force, however, reached forwards and gripped her face tightly.  She found herself staring into eyes that knew too much and yet knew what was needed.  She stared into the depths of insanity at its purest, and in those fathomless leagues, found sanity once again, the awakening of understanding at its own purest.  The abominations shrieked in impotent rage and withdrew.  The empyrean tendrils swirled about them, permeated them, but found no purchase, nothing to grasp.  Some measure of the human's soul caressed hers, and embraced it, and warded her existence against the non-reality of madness.

Suddenly she understood.  Her confidence and arrogance fell away.  She wanted to sag to her knees, but the hands upon her face held her steady.  She tentatively reached her delicate, nimble hands up and took the human's brutish yet embracing own, and felt connection like she had never felt before.  She touched upon understanding that had no bounds nor limits.  And then the colors of madness fell away.  There was only a single, uniform light.  She laughed, joy filling the sound, happiness at all that she understood overwhelming her.  Then she cried, despairing at all she knew, and dismayed that there was now nothing great to ever learn again.  Then she felt herself stiffen, resolve flooding her.  Knowledge could be used, if tempered and controlled and ordered, and given form with care and balance, for the good of all, and she knew this, too.  And then the light faded away, and the insubstantial realm of reality returned.  She turned her gaze, and saw her hands had been freed, and were laid upon his.  Her eyes lifted again to his own, wide with wonder, horror, and awe.

“What are you?” she whispered.

“I am a human,” he replied simply.  Her head shook vehemently, but not too vehemently, and her hands remained where they were, as if hoping she could bring back the intensity of what she had known...no, not known.  Understood.  But she could not.
“You are something more than that.  What was that?  Tell me.  Please.”

“It is I who is the interrogator, and you the interrogated...” he replied again simply, but continued.  “That was experience.  A sharing.  A connection.  You glimpsed a little of what I have beheld.”

“How?” was all she could ask.  Elgius did not reply.  Not immediately.  He studied her, but now she knew, he knew all he needed to know.  The knowledge she held was pitiful and miniscule in comparison.  She knew if he asked it again, she would release it without a fight.  The ends he sought were not crude, barbaric annihilation.  Whatever he sought...it was greater than she could comprehend her.  The thought left her feeling very insignificant...inferior.  It was an uncomfortable feeling, and yet...

And yet...

She was relieved.  Relief surged through her.  She had never realized how much wonder could exist, how much she didn't know, how much she didn't control, how much she didn't understand, but all the secrets of the universe had been shared with her, for a brief moment, and while she could remember none of it, and somehow could understand even less than none of it...she still knew, in some way, the immensity of it all.

Finally, he answered.

“There is a classification system for psykers amongst my kind.  A 'rating system,'” he whispered.  His words, or the meanings of them, seemed so mundane.  Yet she thirsted for the knowledge they would bring.  Another trinket acquired, another star taken from the sky and held to her breast.  “I am listed as an 'alpha-plus.'  I caused the destruction of the feral world upon which I was born and yet the void itself could not take me because I did not believe it could...my abilities were so immense that I could defy reality itself.  I drifted, and desired to travel...and because I wanted to, I pulled a vessel from the warp itself to surround me.  The crew were all killed by the sudden, impossible shift between the warp and reality.  I bade the shape to sink me into the depths of the Warp to travel.  But before I could, the rip I had caused in the fabric of reality widened.  Daemons, hundreds of them, like light to a black hole, were drawn to me.  They scrabbled at my mind, and overwhelmed me.  I was filled with the extents of Chaos.  For years, or maybe it was hours, I don't know, they fought with themselves over my mind, all eagerly yearning to experience the material realm through my eyes.  I destroyed worlds, brought madness to millions, seeded plagues across entire star systems, and instigated planet-wide orgies that led to depravity of the most horrible sort, all outside my bidding, as one daemon would steer me one way, and then another would steer me another.  I was a puppet, a plaything, but they could never agree, they always fought...the very elements of chaos itself, unleashed within my soul, always there, always circling, but never snuffing out the flame.  Feeding on it, yes, pulling me apart in a thousand, thousand ways every moment of my existence...but through the madness, through the rage, through the uncontrolled wanton desire and the sickness of life itself...I saw what it was that fed it all.  I saw what it was that allowed all of this.  I saw knowledge given no focus nor purpose.  I saw death visited upon others for no reason other than its inevitability.  I saw violence and rage...for no reason.  I saw lust and hunger and all of it, always, for no reason.  I understood, then.  Reason.  With reason came focus.  With focus came discipline...and with discipline came order.  I saw the truth to it all.  The truth to the cruelty of bloodshed.  The truth to the madness of knowledge given no terminal point of need.  The truth to death and the continuity of life.  The truth to excess and abandon.”

Alissana could only listen as he spoke.  She grasped at what he said, clinging to every word, desperate for the truth he spoke of to be given.  He was silent for several moments, and she felt her curiosity reach a fevered peak.  Finally, she could wait no more.

“What was it?  What was the truth?” she urged desperately.  Elgius merely shook his head.

“It was something that words cannot describe.  It was a feeling, and it was a thought; it was emotion and it was logic.  It was a contradictory truth.  It is what they call madness, when you sink so far into it, that suddenly it becomes sanity all over again.  All I can really describe it as, in the loosest definition of a description, was...it was an understanding...it was reason.”

Alissana's shoulders began to slump, but they stopped.  She thought of what she had seen, or rather, what she had felt when she had seen it.  Somehow, in some way, she understood.  She lacked the connecting elements to HOW she understood it...but she understood it all the same.  Reason...it was such a simple answer, and what it meant was ultimately far more complex than she could comprehend, it meant much more than it implied.  She nodded slowly.

“I see...” she whispered.

“Yes...a little, but you see.”  Elgius slid his hands away from her face.  A sudden desperation welled up inside of Alissana, and she reached for his face in turn.

“Wait,” she pleaded.  He caught her hands, and lowered them in his own, not using his psychic abilities this time to restrain her.  She continued.  “You showed me so much...you taught me so much...I wish I could remember it...but I know I cannot ask that of you.  But can I ask just this?  Can I ask...what you will do with the information?”

Elgius shrugged slowly.  “It depends what the information is.  There's many forces out there that wish to destroy humanity...my kin.  Many forces that would crush all hope of order in the galaxy...all hope of life, of peace, of reason, of balance, of restraint, of understanding, before I can let it take its course.  And I will destroy those forces as I must.  And the reason is because if I don't...then all life will end, as order is brought to chaos, and all that makes sense, all that can have a reason, will cease.  If your kin will cause that...then they will die if they must...but only to ensure that chaos does not find another foothold into our realm.  If there is another force at play I must destroy...then I will destroy it.”
Alissana was silent as she considered his words, but ultimately, she realized the logic he followed...even if her kin had to die...if it meant that it would save millions more of them...  Slowly, she began to understand why the Imperium was so careless about the lives of its people.  The measure of numbers against other numbers.  The cruelty of a reality that had had the ruinous powers of chaos thrust unfairly upon it.  He sought to end it.  She knew in a way that no others could what his goal was, and it was a goal greater than her kind, arrogant and haughty and so self-assured as they were.  Finally, she nodded.
“Then have it,” she murmured, letting her arms go limp at her sides, her head bowing, strands of her blue, green-tinted hair falling to frame her face, her eyes shutting.  One of his hands touched the bottom of her chin and she lifted her head, to stare once more into those fathomless, yet eternally fathomable depths.  This time, there was no pain.  It was a gentle tug, a caress, a scrutinization, and then the closing of a book, and the moment passed.  Elgius stepped back, closing his eyes, before sighing heavily, nodding once.

“As I suspected.  Your kin are not the root of this problem, Alissana...though their arrogance almost made them so.  I must depart.  I will have to begin preparations...and I suspect what I am going to have to do is going to cause a great deal more issues that will have to be addressed as well...but it will kill one more root of this dendritic plague upon us all.”  He began to turn, but Alissana stumbled after him.

“Wait!  What of me?  What shall become of me?”  Elgius hesitated, glancing back at her, before shrugging.

“I free you.  You return to your home.  You make your own choices, walk your own paths...”

“When do I begin to make my own choices?” she asked, staring intently at him.  Elgius looked slightly uncomfortable as he answered.

“When you go free.”

“And when do I go free?” she continued insistently.

“Immediately.  I will have a shuttle-”

“No.  You say immediately, that means now.  I wish to make a choice right now.  I want to come with you.  Let me help you,” she urged, fervently hoping deep down within herself in the heart of her heart that he would not say no.  As usual when scrutinizing her or considering her, he did not reply immediately.  He frowned, his mouth opened...and then it closed, head slowly tipping forward into a modicum of a nod.

“Very well.  Your eyes have been opened to an extent, after all...and I could certainly make use of a warrior of your willpower, experience, and skill.”

Alissana felt a surge of...relief?  Trepidation?  Anxiety?  Joy?  Some mix of it all?  It surged through her like a tidal wave crashing against glittering sands of her home.  The thought sent a twinge of regret through her, but she pushed it away.  There was more in the universe than just her home, just herself.  She knew that, now, and made no illusions otherwise.  Still, she took another stubborn step forwards.

“And another thing,” she stated, reaching for his hand with one of her own.  He regarded her with detached interest, but his fingers spread to let her lace her own through them.

“You make many requests...” he muttered, a faint smile tugging at his lips all the same.  The smile was returned by the eldar ex-autarch.

“This is one you may enjoy.”  She slid up around before him, before lifting her other hand to press it over his chest, where, as she remembered from her countless battles in her past, his heart would be.  It was a symbolic gesture, but she wasn't sure if he would understand it, so she decided to put the action to words...something she knew to be necessary when she saw the quizzical expression on his features.

“You shared something with me beyond description.  While your methods previously tore my very soul to shreds...you did not let the damage linger.  Your acts were of necessity, and not of malice.  They had, as you call it, a reason.  A reason I now understand.  And then you showed me a universe of knowledge that freed me in ways I cannot describe.  It was a gift of unparalleled beauty.  I cannot help but feel...”

“Yes...and?” he said slowly, a frown touching at his brow.  She smiled still, giving his hand a gentle squeeze, hoping the gesture had some universal value.  Her hope was rewarded.  His frown disappeared.  His eyes drifted down, from her hand upon his chest, to the one grasping at his, then back up.  “...Ah.”

“Yes,” she whispered, nodding.  “You may not be eldar.  But the intimacy you shared with me, I would gladly share with you again.  In whatever way we can express together.  Should you ever desire it, should you ever ask for it, should you ever desire of intimate company, of companionship, I will always be willing.”  She fell silent, watching as the mon...as the human, as Elgius lifted their hands up, examining the way her long, slender fingers laced between his, before gently closing his own hand into hers in return.

“I've never given such a concept much thought,” he admitted, looking up at her, his expression carefully guarded but inviting all the same.  “The last time I admitted myself to another was my former mistress, the woman who trained me as an acolyte and rose me to the status of Inquisitor.”  A pained expression shadowed its way across his features, but passed.  His free hand lifted hesitantly, but finally his fingers brushed her cheek.  Alissana let her eyes drift slowly shut, taking in his next words with a thrill of joy the intensity of which she had never dared let herself ever feel before...nor had ever had the need to feel so.

“Yes...alright.”

Alissana's eyes drifted open, and they locked gazes once more, a different meaning conveyed this time.  Elgius slipped his hands from her, then straightened his coat.  “Come.  Follow.  I will explain to my crew and retinue what your presence means and what it entails, but later.  For now...we must converse, and I wish to do so in more comfortable surroundings...this room is starting to pall.”

Alissana smiled and laughed softly.  “I could have told you that a while ago,” she stated, humor in her voice, and she didn't even stop to consider how long it had been since it had last done so.  Too long.  Far, far too long.

Elgius returned the smile, before keying a sequence on a panel next to the door.  It slid open silently, and Elgius stepped out, the former autarch following close behind.  The two guards snapped to attention, but she noticed they could not help but turn their heads to follow after her.  Suspicion was evident, even if their faces were concealed.  It was something, she realized, she was going to have to get used to, and quickly.
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[Story break here, I've been writing the last four hours on this]

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Imperial]] [[Category:Stories/Warhammer 40,000]] [[Category:stories]]