บท 4: War in Heaven I
(Invoroth Rhyliac POV)
"We have to protect ourselves! The Old Ones told us that the Necrons will arrive and they will surely try to eradicate all living beings in the galaxy."
"How is it our fault that the Old Ones provoked a race, which resulted in a war?"
"I second that notion. Why should we bother in a war that has nothing to do with us?"
"Nothing to do with us? The Necron have gotten rid of their souls to achieve immortality. They will stop at nothing to eradicate all life in the galaxy!"
"We don't know that for sure."
I listen to the Council of Elders as everyone is talking at once. The council is the highest order of an executive government in our Aeldari Empire. As the lead scientist, the greatest genius and the very first Aeldari to be created, I am naturally a part of the council. My voice carries weight, even if some don't like this and would like to get rid of me. Jealousy has been rising among the Aeldari towards me, but that was to be expected.
I listen to the voices of the council members and hear them squabble and throw around useless arguments. Despite being different from humans and far more intelligent and more in tune with our feelings, in the end, most Aeldari still want power. Our lifespans are so much longer than humans, so this just disappoints me. But this war will humble us Aeldari.
"What do you think, Lord Rhyliac?" I am suddenly asked.
"I think you are all forgetting what I told you about the Necron."
"And what do you mean exactly?" someone sneers.
"I have been observing the Necrontyr for years now. I was interested to see what race would enter a war they could never hope to win. The Necrontyr were divided before the Silent King, the current leader of the Triarch declared war on the Old Ones. It was the war and the common goal of 'fighting those who refused to give them immortality' which united them. And what happened after they lost the war very clearly?
They fell back to infighting. The second iteration of the Wars of Secession, more widespread and ruinous than any that had come before, began. It was during the reign of the Silent King Szarekh that these godlike energy beings calling themselves the C'tan first blighted the Necrontyr.
The Necrontyr believe it to have been an accident, but I think otherwise. I am certain that by what I know by now, the C'tan planned all of this and used both the Silent King's greed for power, a unified Necrontyr race and all of the Necrontyr's thirst for immortality as a means to gain material bodies.
The power of these star-born creatures is incredible, the raw energy of the stars they consume made animate, and the Necrontyr call them the C'tan or "Star Gods" in their own tongue. The C'tan are dispersed across areas larger than whole planets, their consciousnesses too vast for most humanoids to comprehend, but not us of course. How the Necrontyr ever managed to communicate with them is unknown and for all accounts should be impossible as they don't exhibit enough intelligence or understanding to do so. It was most likely another ploy by the C'tan themselves.
Understanding that such diffuse minds could never perceive the material universe without manifesting themselves in a material form, some Necrontyr actively sought the C'tan's favour and oversaw the forging of physical shells for the C'tan to occupy, cast from the living metal called necrodermis that they had once used for their colony torch-ships.
My previous paper explains the translucent streamers of electromagnetic force shifting across space as the 'star suckers' coiled into their new bodies in the physical realm across an incorporeal bridge of starlight. Thus clad, the C'tan took the physical shapes of the Necrontyr's half-forgotten gods, hiding their own true desires beneath cloaks of obsequious subservience.
Incomprehensible forces were compressed into the living metal of the necrodermis bodies which the Necrontyr had forged as the full power of the C'tan at last found form. As the C'tan focused their consciousnesses and became ever more aware of their new mode of existence, they came to appreciate the pleasures available to beings of matter and the other realities of corporeal life. The deliciously focused trickles of electromagnetic energy given off by the physical bodies of the Necrontyr all about them awakened a new hunger in the C'tan very unlike the one they had once sated using the nourishing but essentially tasteless energies of the stars."
I stop talking for a moment and look at the members in the hall. Even the arrogant and jealous have stopped interrupting and are listening attentively. I have a talent for reeling everyone in when I talk. I was smart enough to surveil the Necrontyr and what they were doing, as I knew the C'tan would come eventually. In chess this would be called a brilliant move and in real life ... the same I suppose. Through this, I saw everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Knowledge is power.
"... Lord Rhyliac please continue."
"It was this new hunger that one of the C'tan came before the Silent King Szarekh, acting as the forerunner to the coming of his brothers. Amongst his own kind, this C'tan was known as Mephet'ran.
The Silent King did not know this C'tan's true nature and granted the creature an audience. The Deceiver spoke of a war, fought long before the birth of the Necrontyr, between the C'tan and the Old Ones. It was a war, he said, that the C'tan had lost. In the aftermath, and fearing the vengeance of the Old Ones, he and his brothers had hidden themselves away, hoping one day to find allies with whom they could finally bring the Old Ones to account.
In return for this aid, the Deceiver assured, that he and his brothers would deliver everything that the Necrontyr craved. Unity could be theirs once again, and the immortality that they had sought for so long would finally be within their grasp. No price would there be for these great gifts, the Deceiver insisted, for they were but boons to be bestowed upon valued allies.
His words held sway over Szarekh who, like his ancestors before him, despaired of the divisions that were once again tearing his people apart. For long solar months, he debated the matter with the other two Phaerons of the Triarch and the nobles of his Royal Court.
Through it all, the only dissenting voice was that of Orikan, the court astrologer of the Triarch, who foretold that the alliance between the Necrontyr and the C'tan would bring about a renaissance of glory, but destroy forever the soul of the Necrontyr people. Yet desire and ambition swiftly overrode caution, and Orikan's prophecy was dismissed. A Necrontyr year after the Deceiver had presented his proposition, the Triarch agreed to the alliance, and so forever doomed their species.
For their part, the Necrontyr soon fell into awe of their discoveries and the C'tan moved to take control over their benefactors. The powers of the C'tan manifested in the physical world were indeed almost god-like and it was not long before the C'tan were being worshipped as the Star Gods the Necrontyr had named them.
Perhaps they had been tainted by the material universe they had become a part of, or perhaps this had always been their nature even when they were bound to the suns they fed upon, but the C'tan proved to be as cruel and capricious as the stars from which they had been born. They soon revelled in the religious worship of the Necrontyr and feasted upon the electromagnetic life energies of countless mortal slaves."
.
The council was silent. No one dared to say anything and I could feel each member's emotions. My transformation has made me more powerful than any other Aeldari, and my psychic powers have risen tremendously. I can feel their emotions and hear their thoughts. Some try to lie to themselves and others actually listen. But the latter part is the much smaller one. I hear their selfish thoughts and some honourable ones who think about the galaxy's future or our Aeldari race. They are all open books to me, despite most of them having practised their psychic powers to a high degree and having protection against telepathy.
"Lord Rhyliac. Please explain to us, what we are to expect should we enter this war against the newly named Necrons and their supporters, the C'tan. Should we accept the Old Ones' 'request', we want to know what we agree to."
"Instead, let me finish the story.
Armed with weapons of god-like power and starships that could cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye through the use of quantum-phase technology, the Necrontyr stood ready to begin their war against the Old Ones anew. But the C'tan had another gift for their mortal subjects. They offered the Necrontyr a path to immortality and the physical stability their species had always craved. Their diseased flesh would be replaced with the living metal of necrodermis that made up their Star Gods' own physical forms. Their discarded organic husks would be consumed and their cold, metal forms would then be free to pursue their great vengeance against the Old Ones and the rest of a hateful universe, freed forever from the weaknesses of their hated flesh.
With the pact between Necrontyr and C'tan sealed, the Star Gods revealed the form that immortality would take for the Necrontyr, and the great biotransference process began. Vast bio-foundries were constructed, and into these, the Silent King's peoples marched according to the terms of the pact he had made with the C'tan.
The procedures the Necrontyr were subjected to within the raging bio-furnaces I will spare you all, but certainly, each was stripped of flesh and soul, their body replaced by a shell of living metal necrodermis much like the C'tan themselves animated by what remained of their guttering self. The pain my surveillance drones picked up and the agony which was transmitted into the Immaterium, I could feel all the way here.
Above each furnace swooped and dove the ethereal true forms of the C'tan as they glutted themselves on the spiritual and electromagnetic remains of an entire species. It was only when the Silent King himself emerged from the biotransference process and looked upon what had become of his people that he saw the awful truth of the pact he had made. Though immortality and nigh-godlike strength and vigour were his, it had come at the cost of his soul, the aetheric remains of which had already been sucked down the gullet of a circling C'tan."
"..."
"..."
"Do you understand? Do you understand what we are going to face? What do you think came out of those biofurnaces after the Necrontyr walked into them? Was it good-natured? Was it willing to compromise and think about their mistakes? Was it even alive? The answer to all those questions is NO. The Necrontyr are now but a memory, and the soulless, undying Necrons have been reborn in their place and with it a deep hatred for the Old Ones and anything that is still alive.
The biotransference process has embedded engrammatic command protocols in every Necron mind, granting the Silent King Szarekh the unswerving loyalty of his subjects. He now has been granted his wish for a unified race, as he commands them all and is only second in power to their C'tan Masters. They march with weapons that are much more advanced than our own and far more advanced than the Old Ones. I might reach such a level in a millennia or maybe more, but it is a fact, that should the Aeldari join this war, we will fight immortal slaves, who obey the command of Star Gods in Necrodermis bodies who command the forces of the Materium and maybe even the laws of reality with seeming ease.
And they are growing stronger from what I could gather."
"What do you suggest? If they threaten the existence of anything that is alive, we are going to be targeted sooner or later, no?" someone asks me.
"You are correct. I am aware that we don't have much of a choice. But how we do things determines the direction the war will take. We still have the great advantage of our psychic might and the use of the Immaterium and the Webway. We are in no way powerless, but we need to understand the severe threat the Necrons and especially the C'tan pose."
*Murmer ...*
I know that we will have to fight and I am also looking forward to it, even if we will lose many many lives in the process and the galaxy and the Immaterium will never be the same again. I am an Aeldari in the end and it itches me to use my incredible augmentations against a worthy opponent. It is a fact, that this War in Heaven will not go the same way as the original one.
I will make a great difference, which the Necrons won't see coming.
_____________________________
I will showcase, just how much more powerful he is compared to even the ancient Aeldari.
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