GW - [ 354 ] (Patreon)

AN: Sorry for the late update. I forgot to schedule it and thought I'd get home in time. Turns out, the family function I thought would last a few hours lasted nearly 10 hours.

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“Well, before anything else, I want to make something clear,” I said, eyes trained on Eldrad’s impressively stoic and unimpressed face. I knew he was freaking out inside even though he showed none of it. His mental shields were rock solid, with no gaps. I couldn’t see or sense it, not directly, but I just knew. “Are you negotiating here as Eldrad Ulthran, or as a representative of Craftworld Ulthwè? What I mean is, do you have the power to promise me something in the name of your Craftworld, and have that promise be honoured?”

“I am here as myself, of my own initiative, but with the support and blessing of the High Council,” Eldrad said neutrally. “But I am High Farseer. I have the power to make such a promise, even if it will cost me greatly to make a decision on my own that will have consequences for the entire Craftworld.”

I gave Val a glance, and he radiated a minute note of acknowledgement. I trusted him enough by now not to lie to my face, even if it was to the detriment of his erstwhile master.

“Then let’s start with the negotiations,” I said. “For a start, let’s see … ten resurrections for a lifelong guarantee of sanctuary to five people I name. Let’s add on an extraction clause if they were to face a final death and a Farseer happened to see it.”

“An extraction could potentially cost far more lives than ten,” Eldrad said without pause, or even a change in his expression. He was watching me like a hawk, reading me as much as I allowed him to. “But the sanctuary clause is one I find agreeable. Five named people will be granted sanctuary for a century, or till the end of their lives, whichever comes sooner. But they will need to make contact with a Ranger party or the Craftworld themselves. For the extraction clause, I will need something more.”

“Ten additional resurrections per extraction,” I said, tilting my head slightly in thought as I tapped my chin. I knew the game he was playing, but I was more than willing to resurrect thousands of Eldar if it stopped him from bothering me about taking any more souls into my Realm. I was going to milk him dry for those resurrections, though. “If you personally keep an eye out for them, then I will throw in a rejuvenation treatment for you on top of it to seal the deal.”

It was not ideal. The people I really wanted to protect would die if I died, and couldn’t be divined. Still, it could be worth it if everything went to shit somehow. There would be a place for some of my daughters to survive and outlive me. 

I knew I had him. He didn’t react; his expression was still a perfect mask of polite interest with an undercurrent of ‘ancient elder indulging a piss-poor youngster to amuse himself’ vibe. It was a good mask, but there was just something in his eyes that was honest. They didn’t narrow; his pupils stayed the exact same radius down to the nanometer, but there was a glimmer of something that failed to escape my sight. 

He hemmed and hawed a bit, negotiating up to fifteen resurrections per name I gave for him to keep an eye on. Then, of course, he insisted we actually go through with the deal before continuing on. His promise of shelter for a century and Guardian Angel Treatment for those I named would come after I’d fulfilled my part, which was fine by me. Let it never be said that I am unwilling to show off when an opportunity presents itself. 

Again, rather predictably, Eldrad wanted to go last. Claiming the resurrections were much more important than his youth. I suspected that while he did believe that, it wasn’t the true reason for his insistence. Of course, he wanted to see whether someone I resurrected came out of the process doing okay before letting me work my magic on him. 

If he wasn’t as eager as I suspected he was, he would have likely wanted me to rejuvenate others before him as well, just to be doubly sure. Hell, I would have been happy with having a few resurrected and rejuvenated people to take back to the Craftworld had I been in his place. I’d have spent a decade or so just making sure none of them had any side effects or anything of the sort before even entertaining the idea of subjecting myself to the process.

Instead of doing all that, after examining the ten freshly resurrected Eldar, he simply removed his glove and clasped my hand when I extended it for him. 

“Holy shit, how are you even alive?” I asked, feeling a bit baffled despite having expected it. His bones had crystallised long ago, forcing him to rejuvenate his blood manually, and the crystallisation was spreading. I could see signs of it in every single organ in his body, even his brain. There was something about the way he circulated Warp energy inside his body in a very specific way, resonating it at a specific frequency as well, at the same time as if … singing? Huh. 

I have no clue what I’m looking at. 

But clearly, it was holding at bay this strange crystallisation that I knew claimed all Eldar who used Warp energy for a great length of time. 

It’s absolutely fascinating … but this isn’t the time for scientific curiosity.

“Stubbornness and spite,” Eldrad said.

“Will you die if I disrupt the energy flow?” I asked, my mind whirling as I worked out a plan. “Even if you do die, I can grab your soul and keep it anchored while I do my work. It’s no obstacle to me.”

“The ailment that plagues me would take days to fully claim my life if I stopped forestalling it,” Eldrad said. “Even at this late stage, it is no quick killer. I could speed it up to be near instant if I desired a swift death, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.”

“I will attempt to do it without disrupting your energy flow, but it will be fine either way,” I said. “Even if this body is somehow beyond repair, I can make a new one. This sickness doesn’t stem from the soul, does it?”

“It shouldn’t,” Eldrad said, still looking unflappable as ever. 

If it didn’t come from the soul, I had no idea where it did actually come from … a genetic disease perhaps? Maybe a built-in countermeasure from the Old Ones? The Aeldari used to be able to live, die, then live again in new bodies, keeping that cycle going forever. I could see there being something preventing them from just clinging to a life when they could live again anyway. 

Then again, maybe it was something else, maybe Eldrad was wrong. I was about to find out in either case. 

My awareness finally swept over and through Eldrad, no longer restrained by either of us. I had it seep in deep before I sent a slithering thread of bio-energy into his body. Following the optimal path I had devised to avoid disrupting the circulating energy, the bio-energy split, branching into a myriad of different vines that slithered through Eldrad’s body. 

In their wake, aged, ancient cells were left reborn. In humans, inside cells DNA mutated more and more as they aged, chemical markers that controlled which genes became active grew disorganised, chromosome ends shortened with each cell division, proteins and mitochondria grew damaged, cellular waste accumulated, stem-cells grew exhausted and so on and so forth. 

In Eldar, many of these issues were non-existent or much diminished. They were a gene-engineered species made by the absolute masters of the craft, after all. Thus, it was both easier and much harder to reverse their age. I hadn’t actually rejuvenated an Eldar before, so this was my first time doing it, and it was proving to be quite different from simply growing a brand new Eldar body.  

I couldn’t actually find the source of the crystallisation, but what I could do was slowly and methodically overwrite every last sliver of Eldrad’s body using the Eldar templates I had on hand, now expanded from that original corpse on the Wanderer and Val by my newish minions. I kept his genes and DNA-equivalents the same wherever I could, but I suspected it was partially responsible, if not entirely. I didn’t know which parts, though, so I had to be a bit heavy-handed. For all I knew, there was some hidden marker in the Eldar DNA-equivalent that tracked their age and triggered the crystallisation after a predetermined number of years lived. 

Actually regrowing his bones, organs, and the rest took no time at all once I decided to go with the heavy-handed approach. I was treating this like a cancer surgery; I’d much rather take out a bit more than leave behind even a single troublesome cell. 

Outwardly, nothing changed, but that was just Eldar for you. They could be thirty, three hundred or three thousand years old; you wouldn’t be able to tell just from looking at them. 

What changed, however, was his expression. His mask cracked, breaking for just a single moment when incredulous shock and outright wonder were visible on his angular features before he caught himself. The expression faded, and he looked calm as ever, but I could feel tension draining out of his body as he finally let up on circulating his energy. 

I held my breath for a moment, scanning him down to the subatomic level for any sign of even just a nascent stage of that crystallisation, but found nothing. 

“Well, provisionally, I’m going to say this is looking like a success,” I said slowly, most of my mind still occupied with dissecting the feedback I was receiving from my senses. “If you relapse, I will make you an entirely new body and stick your soul into it. Free of charge.”

He probably wouldn’t, but I wasn’t a scammer. If it turned out that I’d done a hack job, I would do it again, but better that time. It was a pride thing. 

Eldrad gave me a thankful nod, and then we got back to negotiating, though this time it was he who offered up goods and services of his own initiative. I received a comprehensive set of books and writings on Aeldari medicine, healthcare and their understanding of biology for 50 resurrections. The same for Aeldari runes and runework, with a specific focus on anything anti-Daemon or anti-Chaos, for 100 resurrections. A curated list of other books concerning Aeldari knowledge, things they didn’t mind sharing but were worthwhile all the same, like historical texts and such, for 5 resurrections. 

Then came the juicy part. I would receive five years' worth of direct tutoring from Eldrad over the course of the next five decades, concerning psyker powers and again, with a specific focus on protecting myself from Daemons, Chaos and others who would want to muck about in my head. That promise set me back by a whopping 1,000 resurrections. Stingy cunt. 

He wanted to have those five years spread out across five centuries and pounced like a shark smelling blood when I pushed to have it happen sooner. He finally found the one advantage he held over me: my mind still worked on a human timescale.

I wanted my goodies now. Call me entitled or whatever, but I wasn’t willing to wait decades on delivery. The fucker milked that dry, though not as much as he could have. He probably thought the 1,000 resurrections would be pushing my limit. 

Cute. 

With the bio-energy surplus I had, he could multiply that number by fifty, and I would still be able to pay the cost without dipping into my actual reserves. For context, I had most of my bio-energy set aside for a dedicated purpose; I had another massive amount set aside for emergencies, and another bunch set aside for everyday use. The surplus was on top of everything else; that was the stuff I could spend without thinking or considering the ramifications of it. 

My Dyson Swarms, geothermal energy farms and Ork bio-energy farms were raking in disgusting amounts of bio-energy. If only soul energy was that easy to harvest as well. I could kinda sorta convert bio-energy into soul-energy, but the conversion rate was pretty atrocious. It would be useful in a pitch, but it physically hurt me to pour so much bio-energy down the drain for so little gain. 

He was pretty happy with himself after that, and I could feel him slowly settling down, probably intending to end things there, thinking I couldn’t possibly give anything more. Or he just wanted me to think that?

Urgh. Fucking mind games. I was so going to spend a few days with Orks after this; they were just so delightfully uncomplicated compared to all this bullshit. It was always fun to hold gladiator fights for them, both for them because they got to fight and for me, because I got to test all my monster designs I came up with while procrastinating on doing something actually useful. 

It was part of my creative process. I was no Zen cultivator who could ‘lock in’ and focus on a single task for decades at a time. I was the same way in the before but my current state probably made it worse. 

“Webway paths,” I said, making Eldrad pause. “I know a good number of them that traverse this sector, but I want to know paths leading to specific regions of space.”

“Knowing the path isn’t the same as travelling it; the Webway is under the guardianship of the Harlequins,” Eldrad said. 

“Funny that, I haven’t met a single one despite travelling dozens of paths just this last month,” I said, rolling my eyes. 

Eldrad raised an eyebrow and hummed thoughtfully. “I see. Well, I would be willing to share the knowledge with you, but if there were crowds or armies of other species migrating through the Webway, I would have the Harlequins be quite annoyed at me, and that is not something I am willing to risk, no matter the price.”

“That’s not a ‘no’,” I idly noted.

“It’s not.” Eldrad nodded. “I can grant the knowledge of those routes, but not protection. If you take those paths, you will do so as an interloper and be treated as such by any Aeldari forces that might be patrolling them.”

I just raised an eyebrow at that, amused. I doubted even an Avatar of Khorne, a Phoenix Lord or a whole troupe of Solitaires could cause me any real trouble if I went all out. 

“I don’t mind,” I said offhandedly. If any of them were suicidal enough to actually attack me, then it would be self-defence. If they managed to piss me off while doing so, then … well, that was just assisted suicide on their part. 

“Three hundred resurrections per route,” Eldrad said calmly, eying me like I was some great volcano that might erupt from a stiff breeze. 

“I name the destinations, and you give me the best routes you know, not a route you know,” I said, and he paused for a moment before giving a small nod. I grinned. “Wonderful. It’s a deal then.”

I liked the open-endedness of it. Same with the sanctuary and extraction promises. I could name as many people as I wanted, or ask for as many routes as I wanted. I just had to be able to pay for them, which I was more than able to do. 

I hope they don’t run out of filled spirit gems before I have everything I want. That would be such a bummer.