To Hunt the Phoenix
When you cast your vision upon the galaxy to find the Phoenix Avatar responsible for handing Khaine to Khorne, Arhra, you expect difficulties. Certainly, Ridcully had to contend with much. But it was not the sort of difficulty that the Blind Seer had not overcome before. But then, cornering him in his search to the Segmentum Solar, he found himself clouded at the last moment. Countless plots twisted and shifted, an echo of the power that only the Changer of Ways could command in demanding that
Arhra would not be seen today.
What?
Yes, Tzeentch had chosen to protect Arhra from being found. Why? To waste time and effort? No, Tzeentch could do far more had it truly desired to 'waste time and effort'. Incursions, plots, attacks, more. The resources of a Great God of Chaos were immense. It was easy to second-guess that god, for it surely acted against itself far more than any other. All of this only reminded Ridcully of the
other time he had succeeded in finding Arhra. When he/it attempted to ressuruct Khaine.
Utter disaster.
Countless fronts of the Eldar in the galaxy shorn of their heroes in moments. Setbacks for the forces of sanity, little different from the defeats the Plague God suffered when Ridcully summoned his attention from the very heart of his realm. Of course, the Eldar could retreat. Little comfort for those who died for lack of a Phoenix Lord. Yet still a worthwhile exchange to prevent even greater calamities that Arhra and Khorne would have wrought.
Now it could be repeated again. There was the Storm of Despair in Segmentum Solar. The Daemonstar Sol was of course there. The Void Dragon was there. Arhra was there. Tzeentch was interested and active. The number of possibilities one could imagine where this aided the Changer of Ways or weakened it's enemies were few, but Arhra had a remarkable talent for creating disaster and aiding Chaos for all that he was yet untainted.
So Ridcully relayed his findings to the Exarch tasked with guarding his body. Isenlath. From behind the face-concealing helm, he saw the Exarch pale, but perhaps not as much as one would expect, for she was an Exarch and of a race of people where Farseers gave looming portents of doom perhaps daily.
---
Terror. Terror and fear.
Perhaps too harsh for words to describe the Eldari response.
Terror. Terror and concern.
Regardless.
When it was foreseen* that word would arrive to the Eldar with the request of a Seer Council, one was put together and sent before it arrived. Competition was rife, many a Farseer desiring to work with the revered Munstrum Ridcully, the Blind Seer, the only living Eldar to have met Isha and received her blessing. The bringer of the Scroll of Isha. Who brought hope to the Eldar from the very furthest threads. Someone who the Eldar desired as a God but was as yet unwilling, one of few mortals who was not willing to sacrifice all for power. Like so many fallen to the Enemy they faced.
It said much of the Eldar Farseers that most if not all would be perfectly happy to mutilate their eyes in following the Blind Seer god (if Ridcully ever chose to Ascend, that is) upon a still-theoretical ritual (somewhat lacking a Blind Seer to properly work) for every edge they could grasp in their divination.
And so when the Exarch relayed the Imperial Trust's request to the Eldar, the Seer Council to assist Ridcully arrived in less than a month, a timing more akin to if the Trust had burned favor with the Eldar to summon a Warhost or assassins to strike against one of their many enemies in the region. They were starstruck to meet the man himself, the human hero of the Eldar with all the achievements he had done for them, someone invisible to the Divinations of the Junior Farseers that led the dozens of lesser seers which comprised the Eldar Seer Council.
Most of the Seers predicted they would have a happy and productive experience working with Ridcully, perhaps seeing sporadic, unwanted but inevitable interruptions from the deathworld Avernus. As they would eventually learn, attempting to predict interactions with a Diviner of his caliber with their own skills was the sheerest folly.
But that was a story for another time.
---
For Arhra and the plotting of his demise, more extreme measures had to be taken. A civilization of Seers, the Eldar were no strangers to Divination-Amplifiers, of which Ridcully's ghosthelm was but one of many. Runic Arrays. Artifacts once wielded by Farseers of great renown, forged between Lileath and Vaul when the Eldar Empire still stood strong. A meeting with a Pheonix Avatar in their rare free moments along with numerous anecdotes of the Falled Phoenix and the actual equipment Arhra's followers used, all to provide a link through which Ridcully could Scry Arhra ever so marginally better.
Arhra had to be found. Then killed.
The lesser Seers of the Seer Councils threw the runes, managing the way into the warp, taking upon the lesser burdens that they could, freeing up the efforts of the Farseers to draw upon Ridcully's skill and nature of the Blind Seer, casting their visions upon the countless paths in the past, present and future that Ridcully led them, scouring them for hints of Arhra. Against them was the fog Tzeentch wove around the True Avatar of Khaine, clouding the paths they searched, daring to lead them astray and waste precious time.
Again and again, Ridcully evaded the interference to find Arhra in the past with his Postcognition, wielding his sight to follow him into the present. He cut through the fog, the Runestaff of Ellas the Farseer and Eldar Runic Sorcery around him honing his vision to a point sharper than molecular blades. There, they met Arhra's intricate scheme against them, his followers occupying every branch of the future in an area truly wide with sorceries of their own to divert attention away from those who would seek him out.
Over the months, Eldar fleets descended upon each of them as Ridcully's vision reached ever-closer to Arhra. With Khaine's own skill as he had outmaneuvered Isha and Vaul so long ago Arhra directed his countermeasures against the divination the Eldar were so reliant upon then and now. But in the fundamental Arhra, with Tzeentch's aid, had to evade Ridcully's vision constantly. Ridcully need only find him once, and then Eldar might would finally be matched to Eldar sight, and it would all be over. And if at first you do not succeed, try again.
They cast their vision into the warp again, ever closer to Arhra with every attempt. Ever closer, to delivering death to Khaine.
*Truth be told some had
been hoping foreseen it for very long indeed.
@Durin
