Aerellian Lightningblade contemplates the goblet in front of him, and the bottle standing next to it. His
last bottle, from what was once his own small vineyard. He'd lain this bottle and its siblings down there, a set of two dozen, as the last thing he'd done before leaving for Biel-Tan. Halfheartedly, he cursed his younger self for not bringing the whole vineyard with him, because there would never be another vintage from his home-world. But
no, he'd wanted to
reinvent himself, shake off a wine-maker's indolence for a sword and discipline.
He remembers well the sight of over twenty millenia of careful cultivation aflame, the madmen laughing as they burned in the fires they themselves had set.
He'd gambled that he could bring all that was needed from shortsighted fools, when his rage burned hot in the aftermath. Who could stop him, when he'd risen so?
It seems it was he who was the fool, in the end.
"A man plans," spake Arellian Lightningblade, "and the universe laughs."
A gesture banished the bottle back to his personal stasis-vault. He'd keep it, he decided, as a reminder of this moment.
He stood, and strode from the room. There were plans to be made, forces to be allocated, projects to begin, if he wished to salvage what he could of this disaster-
It was at this point that Aerellian Lightiningblade was hit in the face by a pie.
His eye twitched.
It was Yranberry.
He hated Yranberrys.
He breathed deeply,
through his mouth so that the far-too-sweet berries would not invade his nose more than they already had.
First, he would clean himself, and his clothing,
then he would see to his duties.
And possibly have the Yranberry grove
ejected into space.
(He wouldn't. He wasn't that petty, when his face wasn't covered in pie-)
Eldrad contemplated the pile of shards on the cloth before him, a thin stylus idly sorting pieces as he contemplated. This 'Aeldmoot' had been more productive and informative than he might have imagined. Many plans would need to be…
reassessed.
And whilst it had devolved rather quickly after the conclusion of the Enemy's little silencing attempt, resulting in no real consensus on what to actually
do with the Forgelord's little information-bomb, a few suggestions had been… Intriguing.
"Lord of Misrule indeed," he mused aloud, setting the stylus down. "What an amusing notion. Perhaps even with precedent."
He set the stylus aside and a flicker of will activated the worktable's stasis-field as he stood. He knew himself enough to know he'd get nothing done until he'd gone through the Archives again, looking for the entry that he recalled only subconsciously.
Tyrellian Kulkessrin paced angrily across his solar, battling internally. As he passed his desk for the umpteeth time, he snatched the thin goblet from it, drained its contents in a single swallow, and threw the empty thing into the wall, the clatter and chime of it bouncing off the wall and onto the floor doing nothing to sooth the Asuryani leader.
The papers on his desk continued to sit innocently.
The proposal was practically everything he might have wanted, an encouragement of at least some modicum of unity, without the subsumption to a great empire that Iyanden had once proposed.
It was just...
"Why did it have to come from him‽" he asked the universe bitterly.
He sat heavily, snatching the half-full bottle, and taking a long pull without bothering retrieve his goblet and pour.
Then, before he could change his mind, stamped his seal on the proposal, straightened the bundle, and sent it off.
Establishing some kind of regular communications between, at the very least, the more prominent craftworlds,
was a good idea, after all.
Even if it was that damnable Vaulite proposing it!
Kaeron Firecaller breathed in, and the candle before him dimmed.
He breathed out, and it brightened.
He was nothing save breath, and the flickering light.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Calm.
Discipline.
Control.
These a Pyromancer needed above all things.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Isha, he thought carefully, is a prisoner-
*WHUMPH*
LIGHT
He sighed heavily, and replaced the annihilated candle with another from his desk-drawer, for the eighth time today.
He had, it seemed, a very, very long way to go, before he regained control of his emotions.
A glance showed he had only two left in the drawer. "I," he stated to the empty room, "am going to need a great many more candles."
In place that was not a place, in a tower that was not a tower, made of scintillating and everchanging metal that was neither silver nor mercury, the Watcher of the past and future screamed in rage, his staff that was not a staff clattering against a wall that was not a wall as he threw it in his fury.
A lesser Lord, Etrigos the Farwatcher, suggested that things weren't all bad, as it wasn't like the Eye was actually broken.
One head of the Fateweaver fixed him with a glare, and both spoke thusly: "In three seconds, Etrigos the Farwatcher will become a Chaos Spawn."
The Farwatcher barely had time for a scream of denial that bubbled and split as its power was stripped, and it devolved into the lowliest of Daemons.
Kairos banished the new Spawn from the Impossible Fortress with a flick of a talon, then continued to pace and rant, carelessly flinging grand curses and forgotten battle-magics at any fool enough to disturb the Exalted.
Within the depths of the Warp there is an Impossible World, a mountain of bone so tall that it stretches the world on which it sits into a teardrop. It is comprised of one thing, and one thing alone, should one walk its knobbed slopes: Skulls. Billions upon billions upon billions of skulls, of every size and shape, somehow intact despite the force of others pressing down on them. As one approaches its apex the slope becomes slippery, for flowing blood oozes down those impossible slopes, in uncountable gallons and uncountable colors, impossibly fresh eternally.
At its apex is a great plateau, and at the center of the plateau is a throne, a crude construction of yet more skulls piled in the vague shape of a chair, mortared in blood.
The Skull Throne.
The seat of the Blood God, Khorne.
Who has, at present, fallen out of it from laughing too hard.
Within the depths of the Warp there is an Impossible World, that blooms with rot unending.
To so much as look upon it unprotected is to be afflicted with three times three poxes.
To set foot on its festering soil unwarded is to be cursed with twenty-seven curses of apathy and sloth.
To inhale even a single particle of its air is to invite three hundred and thirty-three plages within you.
At the heart of this pestilent Garden there is a Cauldron and a Cage.
And tending both is the Lord of All That Rots.
Nurgle.
God of Plague and Disease.
"Really, my dear, you should give up this stubborn resistance.
Why, your re…
...ject…
....tion….."
The Lord of Rot's air of faux-affability fades, his voice trailing off even as the form within the cage straightens, strength returning to her as her children learn of her survival, and pray to her once more.
Isha looks her captor in the eye, and states with the inevitability of nature itself:
"Never."
Stand By...
