After Life: 995 words
I stand amidst a green-skinned horde, blood-maddened monsters trampling over each other to reach me. I tower over them, a giant even among these hulking, howling brutes, my rune-encrusted polearm almost equal to my colossal height. I swing the ancient glaive in wide sweeping arcs before me, the berserk creatures rupturing against the blade. Yet the others rush toward me, ignoring their dead, showered in the blood and gore of their virulent breed.
Sitting on the floor of my home, I am holding my infant son, Pauric. I am not long a mother. I am still young, naĂŻve, romantic. The child has my bright blue eyes and Aidynâs thick chestnut hair. I am stroking the babeâs cheeks as he smiles, babbling, his intense love unspoken but nonetheless evident. Aidyn, joins us, his arm wrapping snug around my shoulders. I rest my head on his. I have not yet taken my first step on the Path of the Warrior, never set foot in an Aspect shrine. Really, I too am a child. Hopeful. Innocent.
The Infinity Circuit is my new home. My kindred welcome me. I am greeted by familiar fallen kinsfolk, as well as unknown ancestors. All are paragons of the Craftworld, fortunate to have their souls recovered. They greet me, try to comfort me, help me adjust to the afterlife. They tell me there is no war here, no fear of She Who Thirsts. They repeat the old proverb: Bonn dan nosh corinnid, âOnly the dead know peace.â I am now part of a community. Not a military unit, but a harmonious society, bonded in understanding, united in values. Still, rest eludes me. I miss the war, the cause, the joy of cleansing the usurper races.
The Craftworld has bestowed upon me the title of autarch. I kneel before a statue of Kaela Mensha Khaine, his terrifying visage glowering. As a Fire Dragon I have fed on the fury inside. As a Dark Reaper I have destroyed simply for the sake of the destruction. Yet I have never succumbed to obsession. They say it is due to self-discipline, but the truth is there is a hollowness inside, an absence so cumbersome it keeps me forever grounded. I wonder if the God of Murder can perceive this fact, the gaping void at the centre of my soul.
Aidyn is lying in bed with me. He is on the Path of the Poet. I think he is so accomplished, so far along his path, not knowing that one day I will have walked all the Warrior Paths, then finally the Path of Command. He asks me to promise to die at the same time as him, so we will enter the Infinity Circuit together, and will never be apart. What if, I ask him, our souls are unrecoverable, not captured in a stone? This idea shocks him. He tells me not to think like that. I tell him I think about it all the time. A fate worse than death.
The Infinity Circuit is despoiled. Servants of She Who Thirsts attack a place meant to be inviolate, joined by deluded heretics enacting a rite. The former feed their deity and the latter claim to materialise another. How many gods will we Aeldari create, in our vanity? I am spared, but many of us, the best of us, are consumed, extinguished. I mourn, but in private, in isolation. What cruelty I am saved when I do not want to persist. We have made a prison for our blessed dead and call it an afterlife. I see that now. A paradise, a place of peace, is anathema to me. I am a bride of Khaine. I want to follow him. His example.
I am returning from my first voyage on the Path of the Envoy. A messenger greets me once I re-enter the Craftworld. He informs me, with flawless etiquette, that Aidyn and Pauric were slain by Ork marauders while visiting Aidynâs parents. Their souls are unrecoverable. Lost. Destroyed. I am inconsolable. I curse myself, She Who Thirsts, we who created her. The next day I change to the Path of the Warrior, adopting the first of many Aspects.
The seers repeat my name like a mantra. âUnnail Sadh Keva of the Billion Battles, the Herald of Demise, Orksbane, Saviour of Laith Lauchlan, Martyr of the Aristech Reach.â They beseech me to pilot one of their wraith-constructs, to aid the evacuation of a Maiden World. They will guide me, shepherd me in battle. I tell them I agree, but on my own terms. They say their visions already told them as much. They do not ask me to reconsider.
They concede I have earned the right to choose.
I am a child sitting on my fatherâs lap. He is an aged, learned, wise. He tells me about the paths, the ways of our people. He insists the Aeldari will come back from extinction, that one day our civilization will conquer the galaxy as in days of old. I ask him how we can make tomorrow be like yesterday. He just smiles and pats my head. He never answers the question.
The evacuation is almost complete, the seers report. Waves of Ork warriors keep coming. All perish. They are fools jumping into open graves, thinking it will affect some great change, It will not. We Aeldari are more like them than we care to admit. We are not mindless as they are, but we are no less deluded. Some races should know when to die. As the last ships ascend into the stars, the seers bid me farewell, wish me blessings, sing my praise. I do not answer. I turn my glaive and embed its tip in the chest that is not my chest. There is no expression on my white featureless face as I sink it in farther, deeper, until, in one thrust, I shatter my soul stone. With a rush of relief, I plunge into waiting oblivion.
