Reality Shift
Chapter 1: The Fear
Silent footsteps echoed through the nigh - empty halls and corridors of the craftworld. The eerie echo was actually stronger than the steps themselves, resonating and vibrating back and forth as a lonely figured wandered places that had fallen out of use a long time ago. There was just dust and remnants of former glory now.
With a sigh of relief, the figure reached a small room in this section of Ulthwe, a room dedicated to his loneliness. He dropped his staff, his sword, his spirit stones. He dropped the runic armor, he dropped the iconic image of himself. He dropped the living legend he has involuntarily become and allowed himself a moment of being just himself - an eldar, a living being. In order to achieve that, he reached for his mask and unfastened it. He held it his hands and looked upon the laughing face of Cegorach depicted on it.
"You always get all the laughter, but I am the one everyone calls dick." he uttered, but there was no real spirit in that accusation. He cast the mask aside. Masks, masks, masks. Judgement mask, dancing mask, Cegorach mask. And what do they all hide? Eldrad´s mask, a mask made of skin and blood, a mask that would not go down. Eldrad was pretty sure he had some personality...in his younger times. But now it was nigh impossible to recall that. Over the course of centuries, he has forgotten who he was and became just an iconic image, hero, leader, yes, all of that. But he was not himself. He was no one. With a smirk, he remembered a battlecry of one of his many enemies: "All is dust".
The small room was empty except from an old chair placed in front of a huge mirror. Eldrad sat down in that chair, but did not look in the glass, choosing to turn his gaze to the clean and empty ceiling. These moments of contemplation were becoming harder and harder and he was needing more and more of them. He wanted to rest. He wanted to finally calm down, his very existence becoming unbearably painful. Alas, he couldn´t. There was the work, the responsibility, the plans he had to make. But these were not important now, in the moment he closed his eyes and tried to remember his family.
Nothing came. We have trouble recalling people we have not seen for a month, not to mention ten millenia. being extremely long - lived is a mixed blessing at best...the arguably most potent mortal psyker of the galaxy could turn worlds to ash, kill and save countless masses, even could make a star die or be born. But he could not recall his mother. He could not recall anyone he would truly belong to. It was all just taking too long. There was...occasionally some woman and there were his daughters, but they were already dead. They did not know, but they did not know what Eldrad did. He gave them lives with this very purpose: To die for their kin. He knew that somehow this was a crime, even if it was done to save the entire race. He knew he should feel guilt, but there was none left. He wanted to drop a single tear, but he had run out of these so long time ago. He could not tell them, either. They will have to see for themselves. They will have to hate him for what he had done. They will have to gain strength from that hatred. And than...his time would finally come.
His hand reached for several runes in the dust of the floor. He grabbed them, tossed them as if they were mere dice, in a glimpse of vain hope they will show something else this time. But he didn´t even look at the result, he knew it already. There was nothing.
From the very time he was born, Eldrad could predict the future with a terrifying precision. He knew what to do to avoid certain ends and how to divert the flow of the river Time. But not now. Far on the psychic horizon, so far no other Farseer could see it yet, there was only darkness. His gift could not see through it, but there was actually nothing to look through. There was just...nothing.
This matter had troubled him for a long time. He acquired some information, unreliable, but available - at least available to him. Somehow the end of his race drew nearer than expected, so near that there was no chance Ynnead would be strong enough by that day. The farseer, the leader of his people, the living legend had to decide what to do and how to avoid that fate - and he was crippled with fear.
It was not the eternity of nonexistence. It was no tthe danger of being devoured by Slannesh. It was not the myriads of eldar dying without reason, it was not chaos ruling galaxy. The farseer had always known what would be the best course of action, for full ten thousand years. Now for the first time, there was nothing. And he was afraid of making a decision.
(More will be added soon)