Eldrylth The Life Giver's Story

Beneath the planes of reality a swell of etheric wake passes the pathway as a huge creature quietly moved along her business carrying her reality with her. She was on her way to help her progenitor, Tolyl, but a thin connection of strands in front of her gained her immediate attention. A outer wyrm hastily bidding to halt before impact she stopped in time to nudge one of the paths much like a train just in time to do the same to a car. What were these twitching strands and to where did they go? The obstruction gained her interest as well as her sight as bright starlit heavens for two pairs of eyes opened to see. A bulge of a the huge creature's eye distorted reality along a path as Eldrylth examined it from outside like it were some curious fish bowls piled along a hallway.

A seamstress of planework, in mirror to her progenitor's shredding force for such, saw careful attentiveness break through a frayed seam to tether her own inner reality to the network onto the gap. Her threads of reality tethered well enough to most anything that can cross realities and the realities as stitched together had an artist's skillful dallance. A new hallway folded into life a grassy verdant if confusing view of a reality lacked certain consistency of gravity.

Tiny the spaces indeed paths turned out to be. Quite too small for herself to explore but she long had a solution for that. Across the newly tethered inner space she looked for one of her Borealis. Each busying itself eternally for something wandering in carefully prepared circles so they did not interact with each other. Too close to each other it did not do their minds well to touch patchwork minds so self-similar. She found one from a human tavern she liked, empty though it was, cleaning a bar for a tomorrow that would never come. A door opened to the pathway and the change immediately drew the purple-armored creature's attention. Scrying loci deeply written into the armor that contained the amalgamate she watched with rapt attention the senses of the Borealis as it wandered across the threshold into the pathway.

~~~

"This isn't my bar," A male voice intoned from inside the armor with slow profound confusion, "I guess I'm done for today? Time to go for a walk! But I forget where I'm staying right now."

Borealis looked down one path then the other and shrugged the hollow androgynous voice intoned, "I guess one way is as good as another until I remember."

Creatures of the Fallen Emperor were ones created with imperialist expansion which changed little by their association with the Living Emperor. However without the fallen emperor in the nascent years of the creature known as Myrkul's Vein its exploration was a thing devoid of nationalism and had apathy toward the nonhuman. However this particular collective of creatures had their own form of the Webway though unable to cary mass and it was only a matter of time until they'd collided as Myrkul explored out from Terra. When it encountered, or rather by happenstance drilled into, a webway while threading its own potentials they quietly took it up under their own auspices. A throng of small mouse holes in the walls of broken sections of webway found it in a state of deep disrepair. Their resources proved compatible with its construction as repairs began in earnest. Some sections take up a purple hybrid hue among the wraithbone where splints of ferroplasm uncollapse broken ribs of the endless winding space.

Though protective walls exist between broken spaces they'd not yet purged the creatures from this place hadn't any quite yet. If the Living Emperor did not know about their activities it was simply that he had not looked or asked. The creatures underneath the overbeing toiled endlessly in all reaches of their territory but did not report unless asked explicitly. There were several large purple sections where the creatures had refurbished a destroyed portion. They navigated around runes of power sealing sections away digging between aged wounds to extend accessibility between sealed cleansed tunnels until they learned how to gain access. They were not creatures that smashed existing architecture merely because it was in the way and simply maintained the walls keeping them out from their own side.

As such far flung reaches weren't out of notice though not nearly as dense with servitors. At a point just outside the system a creature normally busied with digging new channels instead busied herself instead with designing a Webway compatible psychoportation locus. It would be necessary when Myrkul's core gate was completed that they did not damage the existing tunnels by expansion of their mouse-holes within it. Easily the diameter of a battle barge's furthest width and her a head slightly more so four huge eyes spy her targets of interest in vertical or horizontal pairs. Her body of bony scales emerges from a hole in reality around where a skeletonized ferroplasm superstructure takes shape. Her own will holding the transected channel open while they construct the ring about her long body. Small black-robed humanoids walk across the metallic surface absent any protection from the vacuum as small novas of psionic metacreativity manufactures assemblies for those servitors to install. Given bits of free-floating seared debris and small human-sized worms moving between them to consume bits of ruined Webway fauna it's clear that this particular research has been a long time ongoing. The gate here likely for similar reasons as her choosing it given a place away from interfering living creatures and their noisy emanations. Eldrylth did not care to carry any ostentatious imperial markings of the Living Emperor as did Tolyl. A lesser loyal first to Myrkul's Vein and humankind as a whole.

The sparks stop for a moment as those slit-eyes look toward a whisper of activity from the Webway gate. Has something put it to use? Her awareness connected to small purple weapons adhered to the gate, much like an array of weaponized barnacles along repaired sections, warm up to try to scry the worldship and quantify its nature. The minimally intelligent servitor weapons were organized for psionic hardening not adaptability and they'd conclude shortly even by passive inspection that the ships were neither tainted nor demonkind. They would thereby stand down. Minimal curiosity sated the lesser of Myrkul simply detached her awareness then resumed weaving new manifolds. Humankind doing as they willed, she hoped they would be quiet.

"or peace, though far and few between"

Vallek stopped to think on that one word and turned to face the exile "Peace? our race has known naught but survival and destruction for ten millennia..." Vallek shook his head and raised a hand to stop Kaileth from continuing "do you sense that presence?" Kaileth turned to the void and focused upon his psykic senses. "another being of great psykic power?"

though Vallek and Kaileth weren't the only ones to notice the presence of the Myrkul and the Myrkul, those with any form of psychic or psyker presence would feel the tens of millions of Aeldari aboard the craftworld, most almost latent, others far more powerful as they walk the path of the seer. Vallek marched from the council chambers and made his way towards the crystal sanctum.

the fleet had fallen into its defensive posture but by further study, most would realize that this 'posture' or fleet positioning was the normal flight paths around the craftworld, fighter craft swarmed around the craftworld watching all angles, sending and receiving psykic orders and updates to one another.

Vallek soon arrived at the sanctum of the seers, the crystalline structure glistening in the light as small psykic spiders paced across the surface, within and walking towards the central temple Vallek would see the hundreds of Farseers and Warlocks who had given their lives to the craftworld, their bodies 'frozen' in time as the physical form had turned to crystal, all in a posture of meditation, their runic robes and ghost helms fused to the crystal. deep within, Vallek and Kaileth would come across the farseers surrounded each by their own council of warlocks, casting the runes of fate and reading the strands of fate and time.

to disturb the 'ceremony' would invite the wrath of the warlocks. and so the two would have to wait or investigate without the presience of the farseers.

The noise of that many minds reached her in a tide of melody. It wasn't the cacophonous riot that humankind were prone to. Still, it disturbed her work so thus inclined to stop for now. These were in concordance to at least some degree. A stronger force some backing of intellects within the ship to stabilize the whole. A purpose not wholly unfamiliar to the creatures of Myrkul's Vein. Though peculiarities of the ship's inhabitants had hallmarks of other finds of hers. Remnants among her duties to tend broken souls found by Myrkul among aetherkind. Particularly in recent demonkind she did not object as she rather enjoyed puzzles. Some managed to come forth from the dross whole enough that they repairs were not impossible. Some remnants too long crumbled see little more than amalgam into a favored template. Amalgam of pieces from unnameable souls had some semblance of affinity for their kin. Yet little evidence of an intelligent being. In whole their souls all had some sort of the same self-inflicted wound. Seen to her by a concordance of one kind or another. Each stuck out like a troupe of odd clothed foreign actors with a uniform limp.

Some of them arrive instead within small stones pocketed by demons. Attendant parts with some but forbidden to rekindle nonhumankind she saw them disposed. So Eldrylth's diligent eye shapes their new template around the souls instead. Imprisoning them in a rock seemed more akin to aetherkind efficient though it was. Some souls were too tainted even before they died but seemed of a kind nonetheless. The template couldn't sustain real sapient thought but by this did not break dicta. She couldn't return them to a cognizant bodied form. It did halt the degradation of their limping soul at least and some of them could then still heal the scars. Repair of nonhumankind was never perfect. Otherwise the agreeable ones stored away tending to themselves. Food dropped from the sky to see the templates fed until deciding what to do with them. In this case she would now return them to their own.

Within her inworld from that blue sky her attention then went. Where the creatures and soul anchors lie resting. The anchors incomplete puzzles she'd not yet finished. Near woody pedestals in a grassy bright place of a sunless blue sky small fireflies emerge. Each a psychoportation loci that flit off to all targets. Most head at a tall pine of irrational height small pale squirrels with pointy tufted ears roam free. The fireflies separate and circle around each as she waits for all to find their targets. Some of the more intact souls look a critical eye at the object they know as part of the Eldrylth. Others either hid or chased as raw instinct of the template reacted.

The rest were easier to find. Amalgams reincarnated their templates as pups with some ceaseless repetition. The small pups huddled in nests arranged by the discerning few. The nature of what was wrong with the amalgam wasn't clear to her despite a passing interest. At least the mewling creatures were always in one place for the keen-eyed ones to tend to. Last were black squirrels below in iron cages that rattle and froth at the fireflies. That did them little good as weak as she made their templates. Each marked with some symbol Eldrylth was aware they identified with. She assumed them known enough to warn their kind. Offended by their natures tainted by demonkind she'd scraped their housing template clean. No wells of accessible power left in their frame when building templates. Far more a prison than the stones she'd found in some demonkind's pocket.

Back in space an eye and awareness went to the direction of the craftworld. Eldrylth's massive head pivoted away from her work to an empty space nearby to work. A basal maw flares raw metacreativity using bound psimass to will shard into form. Initial chaotic volumes assemble a small bulb of aluminosilicate. The templates did need to eat and breathe to harden atmosphere against space. Both materials plentiful in the belts the form consuming little of her resources. As the last shards assembled more fireflies of psychoportation appear inside. Clods of dirt and grass fall from flares into the sphere.

Atop the patchwork quilt of manifested grass the migrants the last to arrive. Alarmed pale squirrels and those unmoved critical eyes forced by transition inside. Some looked up at Eldrylth then collected the amalgam pups that arrived. Black ones arrive in a sturdy isolation a large cage with metal iron bars. Each bar far heavier than their scoured template's meagre strength. A screeching throng of anger with house symbols showing in the fur of their heads. The quieter squirrels looking on with distaste as some of the panicked stop to chatter at them.

The template she'd built any of them hadn't the ability to respond to a deep psionic voice. Though as she talked she pondered the those steel-eyed ones in particular.

Their critical eye had much to say as she talks, "Nonhumankind, those are your own and from now I wash myself of you to them. I return to you names that belong to you though some now only exist in the amalgams."

Small blue shards flicker into existence and clink into the center of the grassy dome. Each emblazoned with names she'd recovered in the progress of templating them. Though glad to be rid of them constant reformation of amalgams was tiring. As she impulsed them in the direction of the worldship she did have a wistful moment. As one does when giving away toys.

The warlocks or seers less enthused by any reasonable estimation. A creeping sphere came with some of the aetheric construct squirrels now busied. Some of the critical eyed holding functional eldar souls dug through the pile. As they found their proper names and remembered themselves once more. Threads that fate deigned to have cut reaching out to fuse to fate once more.

Eldrylth felt the ripple in her consciousnesses as Myrkul began emigration from Genesis. Even she found the plane a bland if pleasant void. Utterly pure and untouchable it was a pretty stone unable to grow. Though particular things in reality of immense intensity shook the fabric of the immaterium. Things that should not persist for so long lest it degenerate the basal layers of reality. Where reality would open a bleeding sore just to inhibit such a thing to ever be. The dragon curled about her project of studying the Eldar gate slowly looked to the distant field where such a ripples washed over her. The gate would have to wait. A focus to open pinpoints of psychoportation locus she called her servitors back. The coiled lesser of myrkul elongated as the transection drive buried with her form alit to slip between reality.

Eldrylth neared the system from the underside of reality to find the ties that bind reality already weak. Tears shown by eddies in the Immaterium drawn to weakened borders. Something here had chewed at the basal layers to fuel its own will. An unwise chisel chipping power from an infinite but not immutable foundation. A faint sensor striation in erratic paths throughout the system as the shadow of something beneath. As she grew closer to the center of the damage reality had already begun to buckle. The warp bleeding through and cracked if still small.

At the other side of reality Eldrylth opened a basal maw as a breath of luminous threads stretch and pull to strengthen the layers now weak. A careful seamstress adding threads to torn fabric not caring overmuch who claimed the space above it. This basal layer not quite yet torn but weak indeed she would bandage it enough to recover. Though she was unable to mass quite so much threads as the overbeing made small if continuous patches. A shower of small boulders of metal and idle concretions spray from lines of space across the sector the advancing thread moving at light speed even if the boulders might not. Warp concretions were things of erratic nature though not chaos more a free floating scab upon a sealed sore. As they drained energy away the bleeding sores they sealed would heal. She did try not to throw the largest concretions at the planet itself.

Every so often as she approached a fracture in space her gellar field would emerge. Soon replaced by warp concretions of heavy elements and impure cognizance crystal that rocket away in random angles. She did not think they would pose a problem to the planet she could barely see nearby through the Immaterium. The creatures scrabbling at her boundaries desired humankind there and the daemonkind could not have them.