Of Graves, of Worms, and Epitaphs (Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader)

The Laurent · Jul 16, 2024

Of Graves, of Worms, and Epitaphs

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:

On This Date, the 35th Day of the Seventh Month of 490 KT [Koronus Time] Did This Occur

THE GREATEST ROGUE TRADER, LORD OF THE FREE KONOROUS EXPANSE, DIED. THE FOLLOWING IS AN ACCOUNT OF HER FINAL DAYS, SUCH THAT THOSE SEEKING A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF HOLY VALENCISM MAY BE INSTRUCTED BY HER MERCY, COMPASSION, THE EASY WAY SHE ACCEPTED DEATH WITHOUT CHASING IT. FOR BE IT DECLARED THAT SHE WAS WITHOUT FLAW, WITHOUT FOLLY, THE PERFECT RULER, AND PASSED AS A PERFECT RULER WOULD. WITNESS THEN THIS FULLY TRUTHFUL ACCOUNT OF THE PEACE AND SERENITY OF HER DEATH, HER CRAFT, AND THE UNTROUBLED SUCCESSION, ALL THESE BRILLIANT ELEMENTS OF…

*

In those last days, in the five-hundred and twenty-third year of her life, Tessara Von Valencius is mercurial not because at last the ironclad brilliant thread of her mind is fraying and breaking, but because, like a desperate guard who is down to the final bolt in their weapon as the Tyranids scrape against the walls of the station, she would not have another chance at all. And so she veers from decision to decision, her ability to plan long-term at once heightened and shot through with indecision.

She has lived longer than any Hive Scum had any right to, she said once to a nervous Confessor. Every moment is precious, every moment has weight and value, souls flying through infinity… she spoke words now and again, sometimes in other languages, that had made many suspect from the very start, many centuries ago, that she was some kind of heretic. How could one obey the Golden Throne but not the Imperium? And even that sometimes seemed a fig-leaf for a belief far more nebulous.

But each foe has been bested, and rule has come into her hands, and now it is clenched tightly. But she would have to let it go, and into an uncertain succession even after a century of preparing for her death. She has done her best, but her best is not enough. Everyone knows it, though nobody can admit it. Succession will be troubled, even if some were hopeful that it'll work out. The passing of power from one monarch to the next was never smooth. And somehow… she has become that monarch. Of some kind.

She hasn't been planning for it, but she hadn't been not planning for it either? The Tyranid attack four decades after her ascension to the seat as Rogue Trader, and then the Ork Waagh! a decade after that put her in a position of authority, and then another Inquisitor had popped up, escaping from the darker regions of the Expanse and then there had, within two decades of that, been the 'Dispute' between Heinrix and that Inquisitor, which had led to the declaration that the Calixis sector was in heresy and clearly Koronus was run as the God Emperor wanted, which led to a split, which led…

By the time she was a century old, she had somehow become the ruling power of a sector, more or less, which was--more or less--in rebellion against the Golden Throne in all but name.

And then the battles came, and then the wars, and then Nomos had stepped in decisively, after decades of watching and learning, and then from there things had spiraled rather absurdly as power seemed only to fall into her waiting hands greater than anyone has ever had over the Koronus Expanse, and far greater, or at least finer-grained, in truth than the power she knows rests in Sector Lords.

And on and on and on and on and on.

The Expanse took from you, and then took more, and you guard your light more and more as the years went on. This is true of everyone, and she is not so stupid as to consider herself not a subset of everyone. This is not her hubris. But of course, she is a quarter machine by this point, held together long past the point of sense and reason by an entire team, yes, but also her own lack of sense and reason. She is not as afraid as she should be, but of course she is afraid. She doesn't know what's going to happen to her, or those she cares for. She has no idea what will come of her soul, even though she is not hunted by She Who Thirsts or sworn and pledged to the Dark Gods.

She has five possible (known) successors, and she has not been at all clear who is going to succeed her. It is a safety mechanism, but also an ongoing evaluation. But there's a point at which it starts being dangerous. It is a wonder she's not been assassinated yet. She doesn't believe she's thinking over any Kunrads, but she cannot be sure. Ambition has a taste that never leaves the mouth once it has filled it for even a moment.

She's not denied influence and authority to anyone, but. But.

There are a thousand things that burden her all at once, at every moment. Her body feels so strange to her. A quarter machine: the pills, the things she's needed before to make her feel like who she is are almost unnecessary anymore. She takes them anyways, remembers the feeling of it, the secrecy and the skepticism. There's so many little things, but she has been Lady Tessara Valencius for far more of her life than she was Tessara No-Name, and that longer than she was someone whose name is buried, some starveling boy playing with a knife.

All these fears, all these doubts… she lets them go, for now.

Her knees ache, but she feels more relaxed than ever when the voice intrudes, "And… there you go, Elantach." The voice is so familiar. It has not changed at all. She has changed, though. Tessara knows that she has changed and so has Yrliet, and she appreciates it. She cannot help but have nightmares of the Necrons, trapped in stasis that they pretended was something more glorious than it was.

"Yes. I feel more rested," she confesses, as if it was a surprise. She reaches out, and tries to rise, but her knees are aching too hard, and she flops herself down. She's not that annoyed, and she laughs, "It seems like I'm going to have to get up slowly. It really is something, the way your knees are always the thing to suffer first and most of all." She wonders what it says about the universe, that human knees seem so poorly designed. Is it evidence that they are just animals like anything else, rather than the creation of some God? But then, so far as she can tell an Aeldari can be kneecapped just as easily. (So too can they bend at the knee just as easily, to tyrants and fools alike.)

"Elantach, I can help you up," Yrliet says. She has no trouble standing up, smooth and graceful. Her frown makes Tessara feel seen, as if everything she is has been revealed and found adequate. Yrliet worries about her, and she has to wish that she never worried Yrliet. But she still feels happy that there's still that concern. She's still alive, and she knows that this is its own kind of wonder.

"Thank you," she says, after just a moment of savoring a vision of actually standing up on her own. It is a sharp-edged vision, because she knows she could probably manage it but that it would hurt and would involve an undignified wiggle towards a wall to use as a brace.

There is nothing at all designed to make someone feel more mortal than to need help to stand back up, to cling to the touch. But the touch of her love, Yrliet's touch, even though the fabric of clothing feels like nothing more than a kiss.

"I'm going to do some paperwork," Tessara confesses. "But, I would like to take a walk later if I'm up for it. Will you be able to be there?"

"There is little else to do, Elantach."

Yrliet does have things to herself. She still doesn't entirely understand private space, but there is a shooting range that only a few people use. Tessara used it often, but in the last few years has only rarely been able to practice her sniping. There's several rooms that are Yrliet's to use, even if she is not secretive about them. One room has a small forest of sort, a greenhouse like those that she's used to fill empty spaces throughout the ship, the better to add to rations. There are places for Yrliet, but she is still, even centuries later, not comfortable around humans.

This intimate dance of affection and trust is lovely, it is a balm for everything she is, but she knows that the day will come when Yrliet is no longer bound by it. She doesn't know what will happen then. But she clings to Yrliet's shoulder and smiles tremulously. She cannot always get what she wants, but this, these moments, they make it worth it. They must.

(Tessara Von Valencius has forty-three days to live.)

The fist is a kiss against his cheek. He could kiss the enforcer back. Perhaps one day he will. The boy with the pale skin does not dodge. He was expected to half-dodge. His clan representatives can attack the man now. Enforcers can't use guns, or clubs unless it's a crisis. But a few kicks, a slap or two, that's usually fine. There's a saying in the lower decks: nobody but Lady Valencius could object. In theory anything not defensive is against the rules. In practice, a few slaps, nothing that left permanent damage, is just part of the rough and tumble of life.

So he did not dodge because it meant that he falls and his head bounces. He is reeling, but the Enforcer steps back.

The boy is fourteen. The Enforcer is nineteen. They've known each other back when the Enforcer had been in training.

"What do you want?" the Enforcer asks, his voice no longer booming. They are in a corridor outside of one of the rest areas. The boy has been trying to break into a bunkroom that is not his own.

"Someone stole my juice," he declares quietly through a swollen cheek. "It's in there. Just… let me get it back."

"Someone? Someone who?"

"Clan rep's son, you know him."

A big, swaggering sixteen year old. The boy's kissed him before. Not with his fists. With his lips. The boy insulted him, and so he took away something that mattered to the boy. He's done more with the Son than he's done with any other man. Or woman for that matter.

He has all sorts of gossip. If he wanted to make it that kind of fight, he could. Instead, he spits out blood and says, "He doesn't need any juice."

"Sure 'e's not actually a daughter?" the Enforcer cackles, green eyes flickering down to the boy.

"It'd be different juice, then," the boy says. He rises up, wiping his mouth. He feels better than he should. There's something about taking a hit and getting back up that feels like being immortal. They're all voidborn here. They know how to get up.

"Oh, then does he want to make his--"

The boy doesn't listen. He's bored by all of this. He wants to get his Juice and he wants to get back in time for the afternoon classes. He's not that smart, or at least that's what the woman who raises him says, but he needs the math to get to where he wants to go. Whether it's a unit sniper or a junior lay Mechanicus assistant. Or whatever else.

Math is a language that keeps. They say Valencius could calculate the drop of a shot across a mile in a heartbeat. He wants that.

But he also wanted to get his hands on machines, to be so close he could smell the promethium.

Keep a distance. Get close. Both worked.

"Just let me in. You can watch me if you want. If he doesn't have it I'll know it soon."

"You know what, fine. Just don't say anything about that."

"About what?" he asks, confused. Punched? He didn't like punch, he was more of a Juice sort of guy. It is juice that makes him a sort of guy in the first place, some would say.

"Right. Right. About what."

It is just a few moments to open the door with the right security code. He does not visibly peek at what the Enforcer is putting in. But the boy notices it anyway and memorizes it. The door opens.

Inside is a set of four bunks. The room has a closet, and bolted-down furniture consisting of two small tables and Void Chests for personal goods. He hones in on the chest right next to the door, because that's what he'd put it, if he was hiding it. Plus, it has the Void Clan sigil right on the top of the chest. It takes just a moment to jiggle open the lock, and then, there it is.

Amid a number of other drugs and quite a few little things like pamphlets and trinkets, there is the bottle and there are the needles. He ignores all of it to pull out the bottle and check the needles. The bottle is slightly less full than before.

He can imagine it. The Heir's Son poking himself with one of the needles. Grinning. Imagining all sorts of things. It doesn't work that way.

But the boy cannot help but smile. He has the Juice back. The balm for his wounds. He had needed it. They only gave you one bottle a month. But they gave it away for free. Nobody charges for any sort of medicine on the ship, and Lady Valencius decides that this, these different kinds of juices and pills and more, are necessary. Nobody quite knows why, but the boy doesn't care, he just benefits.

"Thanks," he says to the person he blackmailed. After all, there are worse reactions than buckling down. He could have just decided to beat him harder to try to keep him from telling.

Oh, he only gets what he wants about once a year on his birthday. But this is one of the times when he gets it for free.

Tessara Von Valencius, it is said, exists in a state of modesty and humility that proves her greatness and her glory. Her bedroom is small, a double bed but no more, and her entire space consists of a luxurious bathing area that she apparently uses for meditation, an office, a library, and the bedroom. It takes up less than a third the space of her predecessor's rich domicile, and entertaining and trophies both are kept far away from this space.

The real reason is that Tessara is a Hive-Child, and while open spaces are comfortable now when it is beautiful wilderness, she can hardly sleep in a room that is too large and open. It feels like being homeless and half-naked on the streets. It feels unsafe, and so her bedroom is small. But everything is placed carefully, and of the best reasonable quality. The bed is large enough, because sometimes Yrliet does sleep here. In the most literal sense possible and in no other they have slept together before. The floor is hardwood, but softened by a half dozen rugs, some made of silken fur, others of furred silk, and there is no rhyme or reason to which goes where. The walls are covered in paintings and pictures, looking down on any guest and showing moments throughout her life.

There is something to be said for being able to look up and see the past, see Idira smiling down from a photo just a few years before her death. In the end, Tessara hadn't killed her after all. As she thought she would.

There is mercy in a swift death. Sometimes it is the only mercy you can bestow. Twice she has gone down into the dark and misery, twice she has been scarred and crawled up from the darkness. They say all unfortunate things come in threes.

This day, when she has thirty-seven days to live, finds her in the library. There the volumes stretch in all directions, and there is an auto-servitor whose entire job it is to retrieve volumes. A little bit of cloned flesh, no lives lost in this, but it still unnerves her just a little bit. She is sitting in a huge plush red chair, looking at one of the volumes from the Hidden Collection.

Hidden among it were scratch notes she burned of her will, of its many executors, of the desperate twists and turns of a mind that has not some simple answer. It would be easier if she did. The few notes left are to review, and then burn. Layers of wills, all gripping tight to the person who cannot see what they will become. She is sure that there will be disaster, but she can only hope that as it did all those years ago, the disaster can be turned towards good ends.

Hidden among this collection are Aeldari books and poems. She has learned the language, and it is soothing, to fall into a rhythm so different from her own, to consider that she is a small part in a big galaxy. When a century is a minute, a thousand years a moderate amount of time, and even ten thousand merely a handful of lifetimes at best. The trees stretch ever onward, but their roots are dug deep into the skin of the world, so that the Path upwards and down are both endless and in its endlessness finite, for when the task ahead cannot end one can then fill the entire finite time with it and like one who drinks of sweetest water, there is no dissatisfaction. There is in the breeze, in the way each and every thing lasts an instant, an understanding then of what can endure, and that is very little. But of those things to endure, then, what is it that--

The books make her think these kinds of thoughts, these kinds of twisted angles, on top of pure sensory excess, of every detail made plain and explicit but without a divide. It was not description and then feeling, but instead the way that the greenery of the strange sky above the world the Craftworld stopped at reminded one of an ocean that one had visited a thousand years before, and existed now in memories because the very water had been boiled away by the explosion of its sun some centuries ago…

And then there were the Drukhari books. Tactics. Strategies. Information on how to fight them. No culture. They had a culture. But she became an angry Imperial child to think of them. No grace.

So she studies the military when she needs to, and considers the dark things they can do. And that is it. But it has to be hidden away, anyways.

Then there are the manuals on chaos: not manuals from Chaos, but semi-forbidden materials that the Inquisition trains its people on, in order to fight the enemy and understand the signs of them. It is not illegal to have it, though she has hardly told Heinrix or his assistants about it, in order to avoid any… misunderstandings. It is remarkable in this day and age how easily misunderstandings can begin and end.

It is not remarkable at all.

And then, finally, besides a few other things not of any note, the Aett-Vater has poetry from Fenris, sagas and stories, some recorded in scratchy hoarse voices, some written down after the fact. It is an oral tradition, and so the recordings are better. She pulls out these this time and shuffles, each bone aching, to settle into the seat. She is halfway through an epic when she is interrupted.

A bell rings. Ah, guests.

"Lady Valencius, it is the Chaplain. He wants to talk to you about rumors that have been spreading among the crew…"

She can guess which rumors. The true ones. That her health has taken a turn. That she's probably dying. She thinks she has a good few months left. Not many, but she does not feel so weak. She is not spent, surely she is not spent. Surely there is more to do. Surely…

Fear, seeing the gap in her hull, leaks in with the Void.

He cannot hear himself over the din of the argument.

"It's a crime to speculate about the health of the ruler, everyone knows that," a red-faced man is yelling, loud enough that if anyone doesn't know the rumors that Lady von Valencius is dying, they do now.

Ambrosius Vertechos is muttering to himself, because he has no better company. He's lost the person he'd usually talk to, because Mu-Xi 86, the Engiseer in charge of the third port battery, is dealing with other problems.

He wants to talk to him so badly, because he feels so close to having the right answers. It's been a year of testing, and if he passes just one more test he'll be sent to a Forge World for further training, or become the personal apprentice of Mu-Xi 86. And sure, he knows that half the reason he has a chance is because of the Valencian-Amaranth reforms. Sure. But what does her death matter? The flesh is weak, and eventually those who try to preserve it over the machine die.

He's pretty sure that whoever succeeds her is still going to need Engiseers, so it is not as if his own life will be affected by her death.

He just wishes that he could do his work without trouble. Things had been changing, more and more. He knew there was politics about it, but he'd also never really lived in a Sector where it wasn't the case. What did he care that they didn't Servitorize people anymore, but used either pure machines or cloned tissue? Nor was he one of those ground-pounding Hive World sorts, now that that'd all but blown up and half the hive worlds grew enough food for themselves and the other half were abandoned. No, he just wanted to go to a Forge World, or one of the other worlds set up because she had started spreading out the education, and become a full Enginseer.

He wanted to become someone who could make something of himself, and to do that he had to work hard. Omnissiah forgive him, but he did not care much about theology either, and politics and theology are one in the same to him.

"Speculation? All I asked is whether we should do some maintenance early, because it would be vile to force people to clean out any of the vents if they're mourning, or… are we supposed to force people to work in those circumstances--"

The debate is not going to end, and he tries to slip out.

This time he is successful, slipping out into the corridor. He knows where to go. He can navigate even the most confused and odd corridors by looking at the patterns of rust and piping, and knowing how recently each thing has been cleaned up. Ambrosius Vertechos is looking for an ally, or someone who is not going to be busy with politics. He has a question about the energy systems of the port battery. It is a very fine weapon, and he definitely wants to think about if there is any way to increase the safety standards for the internal systems without having to tear out half of the things. There's been some new innovations, thirty or so years ago, and to him it's entirely normal and expected that of course technology would be better decade to decade. That's what technology did. Of course, the flagship of the Sector isn't going to have the very most experimental technology, but surely it is time to update things. The technology for this particular port battery is seventy years old, after an advance in autoloader technology… but it's behind the second and fourth batteries.

He has the very useful capacity to hold a conversation all on his own, but his own company is not nearly enough.

He finally finds Mu-Xi 86, along with three other Engiseers.

Mu-Xi 86 is a tall, heavily augmented individual, who does not prefer any manner of address over others, and so he has had to figure out how not to offend. Two of the others are nearly as augmented, while the last of them was actually seemingly entirely organic… but looked just a little bit odd, a little bit off to him. Ah, one of those Biologos? Probably hiding all sorts of weird things under those thick robes that he sometimes wishes that he could try on just to see if they're really as uncomfortable as they seem.

Though he supposes that they would keep out the cold well enough.

"Consider this query: if we assume that the Successor is already decided, and that it is our choice--" the Biologos woman (?) said, shaking thick, shaggy locks of hair, face obscured by what looked like a white mask.

"Negative: it is not to be assumed, it is to be understood. And if we are wrong…"

"We must try this. Query: what do we have to lose?"

"Answer: Everything." They are talking back and forth while Mu-Xi 86 and the third are silent, except for sounds in binary.

"If we are incorrect in our assumptions, then we will have to show proper deference to the honor and dignity of the office," the third Engiseer declares. "And that would mean being able to provide a salute of twenty-one guns."

Oh no. Even they are talking about the coming death! He has nowhere to flee, and so he stands there, transfixed by this discussion.

Disgusted.

Is this all anyone can talk to? Isn't there a whole sector beyond the whims and death of one woman? But he knows not to say it, that people have been killed for less… not even by the Lady, but by those who love her and do not know her.

He watches, and dreams, and hopes that unrest will not topple his dreams.

It happens all at once. One day she is fine, and then suddenly that night she has pressed the panic alarm. She cannot breath, and her lungs are flooding with bile, and her organs are fighting each other to see which is the first to shut down. It is a turn for the worse, the half-dozen illnesses and failures cascading, and at the center of it dozens and dozens of Medicae and Tech Priests work in a room far too small for all of them, trying to save her. She thrashes, desperate, fear finally finding her and wrapping her around and around and around until she is at last entangled. Hands reach out to tear at white hair, wide eyes look in panic at nothing, and all the while they fight just to keep her alive just a little bit longer.

"Yrliet!" she calls out in a hoarse voice, turning this way and that. "Where is Yrliet?"

"Do not worry about the Xenos. It will come or not," one of the doctors--she cannot even remember his name in this moment of panic--says. "It's not important--"

"If you call her an 'it' one more time I will have you shot!" she shouts through a choking voice. There are guards, of course, standing in the back of the room watching, and the medicae all hesitate for a moment because none of the guards would hesitate for even a moment.

Except, they would wait to drag out the doctor so as to not get his blood all over the room. It would not be hygienic and would risk her own health.

"Yrliet! Where is Yrliet! Please, protect me, the warp, the… the cold dark, the fire, the… please!" She is making no sense even to herself, and the chaplain trying to push his way through has to suspect her of doubt and faithlessness now. But all she wants to do is curl up into Yrliet's arms and hide. She is raw and broken and screaming.

"Hold, Rogue Trader," the Chaplain cries out as he steps forward. He is young, oh so young, face unlined by troubles. Even if she were pious and devout, what would someone so young know that she has not already heard before? It is a cruel and unworthy thought, but it too seizes her. "Yrliet is dealing with a problem. Daemons appeared on one of the less used decks. In order to spare lives, we sent our very best troops…"

She lets out a breath. "And she is a better sniper than anyone except, perhaps, myself… when I was healthy." It is a gasp of words, but she feels the strength settle. "This selfishness is one root of evil. If she saves a dozen lives, that's worth far more than her presence to my comfort… even if this is the last." The words come easier now, as if all that is actually choking her is panic. She settles down and subsides.

She croaks, "Then all must be… well." She tells herself it, and over the next few hours she rallies. She's more spent than if she has spent a hundred hours marching, but they get her lungs working again, and her organs working right, and take away tainted blood and the toxins in them. They do everything in their power, and it works.

She is sleeping, peacefully, at the coming of day on the ship, when Yrliet comes on, spots her, and sets herself down to watch, and wait.

There are thirty-one days remaining, though to some this would be a sour shock, and to others far more than they would ever hope, the signs being what they are.

It is a few days later, and Tessara von Valencius has begun to improve. But while improvement is welcome, they, the doctors, all know that the situation is dire. What they don't agree, as they crowd into the doctor's wardroom to go over their patient's status, is how long. A week? A month? A year? A year seems unlikely, but maybe it could be achieved with a great deal of luck and will. It is not a small room, to fit all of them, and it has fresh-baked pastries. The doctors devour them, sitting there, feeling if not pleased with themselves than at least hopeful that the worst dangers are past.

"She threatened me," Doctor Spaldeng said, glaring over at Chirurgeon Anna Solez, who was trying to sneak the last of the fruit pastries out from under his nose. "I have two decades of experience in the matter, and she was… she was."

"You insulted her lover," Chirurgeon Solez declared, with a lazy shrug. "Try doing that to one of the Guards' spouses, and you'd see a lot worse than a barked threat."

A few wrinkled their noses at the thought of the Lady having a Xenos lover, but others were quite blase. It is a fact of life and has been since before their grandparents were young. One did not do too much to speculate at what explicit things they might, even in this poor moment of bad health, be getting up to behind closed doors. It isn't their job, and so far as any of the records show, she's never gotten any sort of Xenos sexual contagion from close contact with one Yrliet Lanaevyssy.

It is not as if there has not been a spate of Xenophilia of one kind or another. Picking a fight on the matter would be picking a side, and it is a side without any consistent champion.

"I still think we should do a full blood screen and a surgery," Chirurgeon Sanyah Rasvae declared, pounding the table in their usual fashion. "The liver's the problem, and the kidneys, if we replace them we could have her functioning for another year, as long as my… colleagues can agree on the procedures." The Genetor, was of course, glaring at the Medicae Tech-Priest, for they'd disagreed repeatedly on the right solution to the problem, whether it was better flesh or more machinery. The compromise tends to be both at once. "The lungs are definitely going to be a matter of more machinery, they're a process and one that does not suffer much from further automation, I don't think."

"Well, I think," another of the doctors begins, when there is a knock on the door. There's a moment's hesitation, before one of the junior nurses goes to open the door. On the other side is a Engiseer, whose robe is unable to conceal the sheer number of Mechandites they possess.

"Greetings. I am Delta-7 Tarc, and I would like to propose a logical series of actions that should be followed for the good of the Valencius dynasty, and thus the advancement of the true purpose of the Ominssiah."

"What is it?" Doctor Spaldeng demands, rubbing at his beard.

"It is known that there are procedures that have not been proposed," Delta-7 Tarc declares, "Because of a fear of the consequences. However, the situation is critical. It is surely logical to pursue all possible avenues. The bounty that the Omnissiah has granted the Koronus Expanse has not been exhausted. It would be unfortunate and dangerous for a cog such as Tessara von Valencius to stop working here, would it not?"

"Dangerous for who?" a doctor asked.

"The Koronus Expanse. At the moment, surely, you are aware that Azher Valencius is the only of the heirs present? There are logical arguments which may yet convince her of the value of Technical Valencianism, given time."

Ah.

Everyone there, or at least almost everyone, is now sure about what is going on. Magos Calavia Valencius, one of the two known heirs (of five known) who shared blood ties with the ruler of the Koronus Expanse. If the Lady dies now, then surely the one heir present, Azher, might have an advantage from being the last person with her ear and the first person to stand around the flagship of the dynasty.

But at the same time, it's true as well: they have ways that they could still propose that might yet save Tesserae. It will be a long-shot for her to accept, but everyone heard the terror of death that had filled her just a few nights before. Surely she's willing to make compromises in the name of preserving her rule a little longer and letting her death come at a better time. At this point, that's all anyone could manage unless she allows herself to be changed in ways that are almost always the preserve of the Mechanicus.

She's certainly far more technologically knowledgeable than any layperson should be, in the view of plenty of Tech Priests. So perhaps…

How it looks, if one does not know of the plotting:

Cautiously, her doctors come to her with an idea. Recently, there have been studies on Varnexus into life-prolonging for those dying of certain diseases. Using recently uncovered Xenos' technologies, a noble has made an astounding discovery. If you take three young children who have had a healthy life, without exposure to pollution, you could turn their bodies specifically into a serum that you could inject in small doses regularly. It doesn't get you that long, just four or five years at most. And it only helps those who are failing in conditions similar to those that are now facing Tessara von Valencius. It is a limited solution, but it will give her enough time to settle issues. As to how she would be able to gain these lives, it is simple. They are heading for the Lerex system, which has an Agricultural world that has been advancing in technology and riches for centuries after the Valencian De-Specialization Decree. Among the nobles or people of the planet, Lerex IV, surely there would be a few people willing to make the trade in exchange not just for a small payment, but for a fortune and that each child would be remembered and declared a martyr and hero of the Koronus Expanse.

These few years to get her affairs into order might save billions of lives from any chaos that might come if she dies now without a will. They have the name of the Noble house, and they know that the leader of the House who ordered the procedure and experiments is a loyal Valencian, and so surely it is no moral failing to pursue this.

She listens and says, quietly, "But doctors, I have a will. And my will is that I will sit upon my throne and make a pronouncement." She is sitting down at her desk, and now she begins to rise slowly. "My will is far stronger than you think it is, if you think that I will give in to fear. It is, indeed, the case that to suggest that I sacrifice children in the name of my power, comes mightily close to treason." Now she grows dark, how her eyes are dark clouds and her words thunderbolts. "I would rather die to save three children than spend another moment in your company! You are dismissed for the moment! You are to consider what you have done." Her voice rises, and rises. "Or have suggested. That you have suggested it and not done it is all that saves your lives." She grins, and it is a broken, tired grin. "Please, if someone would be at my arm. I am going to have a walk ahead of me."

Yrliet is by her side at once.

In the elevator, she says, "I am about to do something furious, in a heated state of mind." She looks up at Yrliet. Always looking up. She is short, has always been short because in the Hive those who are too tall just bump their heads. She is a small woman, and Yrliet is taller than any baseline human. So she lets the touch comfort her and tries to think.

"Something rash," she says.

"Elantach. You would not shine so bright if you were not angry at… this kind of thing." Yrliet thinks that Tessara is worth more than three thousand Mon-Keigh of any age combined. But she also knows that if she acts like she is, then she'll be worth less than any of them. This is who her Elantach is. Yrliet sometimes forgets this. Each time, her Elantach reminds her, by words or by deeds.

"Thank you."

"For what, Elantach?"

"For everything." There is no strength to enumerate all the reasons she is grateful to Yrliet. There is no end to them, and so there can be no beginning.

The bridge is a vast place, because unlike the ship she first inherited, this is built on the bones of a battlecruiser, a fast and dangerous ship that can serve as the flagship of an entire fleet, and yet move fast enough that it could not be cut off and pounded to pieces, too slow to fight the speed of the likes of Drukhari. And so the bridge is huge, and perhaps a little too luxurious. As she walks, the salutes come. Everyone stops to watch her as she heads towards her seat.

It is a slow procession, but guards follow them, catching up after a moment. She shuffles herself into the seat and then takes a deep breath. "I am making a pronouncement, upon my authority." Scribes hurry closer, and others are now listening closer, "The method of prolonging the life of the powerful by the sacrifice of the lives of three children, as will be described in detail in the document drafted with legal specifics, is a crime worthy of death and removing one from the community of Humanity, able to be killed by any man, a hostile element of the world. Furthermore, the Noble House which has instituted this process is to be investigated and if found guilty, expropriated. This House, the Falrights of Jarris X, are to have the head of their noble house, if they are found guilty, executed by firing squad. The members of the Noble House are to be protected from retaliation by exile, but are to otherwise remain untouched. This is demanded by the authority of the von Valencius dynasty. Any attempt to countermand or ignore this order is to be regarded as basest and most fundamental treason." She speaks for a while, her mind no less agile than it has been in centuries past, making sure that the particulars are known.

When she talks upon her throne, her word is law--absolute power that in other areas she objects to. Yet, when she wills it, she reaches out and grasps it and wields it as best she can. If her hand is palsied, the weapon is yet well-honed, and she is sure it will strike true.

It has found its target before, and perhaps it thirsts. Perhaps it thirsts for justice. That is the thing that must be believed.

She will grip the hilt of dominion, by which she wields the naked blade of Empire, for twenty-seven days more.

One hundred and twenty-six days later, Josias Falright stands before the jeering crowd, wishing he had accepted the blindfold. They are screaming louder and louder, and their voices seem to blend and merge together. Jarris X has been going downhill, his parents had always said, for centuries. But he hadn't quite believed it. He'd simply lived his life until the freak accident that had killed his uncle and thrust him into the position of the grand lord at the head of House Falright just two months ago.

Then the order had come for a trial, and the Head of House is to be executed by firing squad if he is found guilty, and he quickly is. His Uncle is a patron of research, and he has studied many technologies, and one of them must have offended. He vaguely knows of which one it is, but he does not pay attention to science. Nor did he pay much mind to politics and the whims of Tessarae Von Valencius?

The experiments are not his dream. He dreams of silk and steel, of art and beauty, and he is the sort who is a patron of the arts more than of the Technical. So now he stands, having had to run through a gauntlet, and he is nearing a wall.

He knows he will be put up against that wall. It will be a quick death. This at least, he has to 'thank' her for. His wife and four children have already fled, because despite the orders his brothers and sisters have all died of assassination, and the authorities cannot hold back the tide of the people for whom each of her orders is Holy Writ.

He doesn't want to die. But, his children are still alive. Perhaps there will be a tomorrow for them.

"I give my soul to the God Emperor," he says.

Some in the crowd cheer, and some do not. Who knows what the people even believe anymore? He is tired. He takes those last few steps, and turns to look at his killers, and wishes he could look beyond to his true killer.

But little does he know, she is already dead. But the dead hand can grip one so hard that one is torn to pieces and killed.

This is the case. Does he deserve it? Undeniably not. And yet, how can someone so far up predict the vagaries of death, which lands an innocent on a chopping block?

Perhaps that, then, is the lesson. Or perhaps it is worth it.

Azher Valencius meets the doctors. He is a dark-skinned man of medium height, with curly hair and a grin in some situations that has long fled before troubles. When things are fine, he can joke and laugh, but he has no humor when he is stung. He thunders now, delivering down stinging blows as he says, "I know what you have done, you doctors! Do you think I lack ears? Under the command of that blasted Magos, who is my sister by law, you have attempted to seduce Lady Valencius with immoral Xenos technology. Moreover, I know that unlike the technology of those few Xenos species willing to sign pacts of neutrality, friendship, or obedience with the Expanse, or those few individuals who are… willing to do what is right despite their species' innate hostilities, it is the technology of a vanquished enemy! What treason is this, then? I am to order those who proposed it arrested! On the orders of the Seneschel Wessarian it has been done." At his back are guards. "And I will prevail upon the Lady Tessara Von Valencius to be more exacting in her decisions."

"We are her doctors," one protested, a woman who is indeed as much a nurse and caretaker as anything. "Now is not the time to remove us, please, it is…"

But he dismisses her words. There is a plot afoot, among the doctors, against both him, her, and indeed the whole dynasty in the name of just one member of it. They are but two days from leaving the warp, and arriving in the system. The Rogue Trader does not have to be informed for forty-eight hours. There will be time to convince her.

Tessara Von Valencius is on the bridge when they come out of the Warp. It took a minute or three to open the blinds… nobody staring out into the Warp would be likely to be able to stare for long. She has stood face to face with horrors that should drive people mad, and she thinks little of the Imperium's way of warding against Chaos, but this much is true.

This much is also true: the sight of the sun, the indirect promise of sunlight, is almost enough to make her cry.

She could order them to hurry to the planet, entering the Warp once more for a quick jump that would be dangerous in a less experienced and advanced ship, to get up close to the planet. If she wants to die in a beautiful garden, or staring at some ancient work of art, she can do so.

But her whole life has been defined by the void, by the stars, by the travel between them. She settles, awed by the beauty of the system, seeing something with her own bare eyes. The planets are distant lights and stones at best, though she knows they will grow ever closer.

There truly is not that long now.

It is the day after they have arrived in the system, and Azher comes to visit. She is at her desk, reviewing documents and writing a poem. Or perhaps it is not a poem at all. But she sets it aside as soon as she sees him. "Azher," she says, "It is good to see you. Allow me to be an old woman and offer you a candy." She gestures to the seat in front of her, and indeed to the small container that holds a variety of candies, sweet little bursts of flavor that she hardly has a taste for nowadays.

"There are a few matters I must raise," he says, remaining standing. "First, there is the fact of the doctors. I have had several held specifically for their deeds with regards to the Xenos technology."

"Then they must be released," she says, allowing surprise to slip into her voice. "You have, I assume, been treating them well?"

"House arrest," he says. "Or suite arrest, I suppose. But why? They are part of a plot, I have proof that they are a plot from Magos Calavia. I cannot say I disapprove of the idea of you living longer, but not at the cost of corruption."

"A plot from Calavia?" she asks, leaning back. "Really? You think she is behind it?"

"I have testimonies that demonstrate that she is," he says.

"Because one Tech Priest told the doctors so," she says, shaking her head. "I have agents among my doctors too. Anyone of even a little intelligence would know I'd refuse, and then hate anyone who suggested it. Likely, it is the agent of another one of the heirs, who took this chance to try to frame the Magos. In fact, I have evidence that this is the case."

She enjoys the look of shock on his face. "Truly?"

"Truly. You really do need to pay more attention. I do not wish to be an old woman and say it, but your maternal grandmother…"

"Yes, yes, I am well aware of your affection for my grandmother," he says, and he sounds defeated and exhausted. "I know I am not her, I am not Jae, but I saw a threat to you, an immoral threat, and I acted."

There is the pang of loss. Jae died decades ago, and it still hurts. The Heydari are one of the three 'Satraps' of the dynasty, the others being Winterscale and Chorda, the small only pockets of human stars allowed to have comparative independence as long as they kept to the basic laws of the Expanse and sent both troops and taxes when requested.

"Do not think I do not appreciate you, and haven't since your grandmother introduced you to me, all those decades ago," she says. "You enjoyed the candies then, I recall."

He flushes darker for a moment and shakes his head. She is not really mocking him, instead her voice is fond, but it looks as if he is suspicious of mockery.

"Did you know the whole time, the doctors' scheme?" he asks, instead.

"No, I learned after the outrage. But I've looked at my declaration, and I stand by it," she says. "You can't always learn these things in advance. It all happened too fast. But, you need to notice these things."

"Is that my failing? Is that why you don't--why you."

Don't love me, he doesn't say, but the word echoes. There is power, infinite power, in the things you do not say and do not do. It is the resonance of your soul, of the things you might be. Once, long ago, she met three versions of herself. From when acts were different and selves were different. One, a vainglorious monster who thought that the galaxy owed her a living. One, a heretic and monster, who worshiped at the altar of hate. The last, a pitiful thing, a pathetic, self-loathing, fanatical 'man', dressed in clothes 'he' had been able to pretend to be comfortable in for decades, loyal to the cause of the Imperium to the last even if it meant denying who she is.

She killed them all. They are dead. All the other hers that might remain have also been in one sense pruned by the passage of time. She has no more choices that can split her off. What she is, she is. If this is evil, if this is good, she knows that there is no straying from her course. This is the hard and simple physics of reality, that surely exists for souls as well: people can be saved, but there is sometimes a part beyond which one has fallen into an event horizon.

In this, in nothing else, her power is spent.

"What is your other concern? I am sure it… all ties together."

"We should raise troops on the planet. Voluntary, of course. They're grateful, and we're going to need troops no matter who winds up in charge," he declares. Azher stares at her.

"State yourself plainly, make your case," she says. "You are here, and the other four are not."

"You have done great things, m… madame. You have made a better Expanse, in which Humanity can find its full flower, can fight only those Xenos who are hostile and keep strong against any risk of that, where fewer people are Servitorized than ever before, where fewer people are on prison moons, where more are educated, more are happy. It is a great achievement, blessed by the wealth and the production of goods that are then efficiently spread around to benefit all, rather than a few. But if you remain a single Sector, even cut off by Nomos, there will always be a risk of destruction." He warms to the task. "I say that there can be no such thing as Valencianism in one Sector as Nadia so clearly believes. She's the one whose agents, then, are behind the plot. She has always been jealous and cunning, a spy and a bureaucrat, and… so of course she does not understand. We must gather an army and conquer the Calixas Sector, and bring the light of Valencianism to it and through it also strengthen our fleets and prepare for the dangers of the galaxy."

"There are some that say that the sword can bring only misery, and yet consider that when you took away slaves, they called it despotism. But was it that, or was it the despotism of liberty, of the fact that you were building from Humanity something good, something bright, something true and worth more than a thousand lies? My whole life will be eaten by this, but perhaps one day my successor's successor's successor will see the whole of the former Imperium liberated and happy and wealthy as it has never been in all of history," he says. "We cannot, as she would demand, hide away and simply manage what we have here. Any more than you could stay on a single planet as its de facto ruler--"

"I was forced," she says, quietly. "I would have happily stayed on that planet building the closest thing to utopia I could manage. But Theodora came, and there was no choice. She said I would go, and so I would go. I… cannot regret it now, not with who I have met, not with Yrliet. But it was not a choice." She knows that he hates to imagine it, that somehow he idolizes her even as he is uneasy around Yrliet.

His grandmother was that way too. By the horrid standards of the time she was no great enemy of Xenos, but she was as angry as any of them at Yrliet's choices.

"You think, I'm sure, that I want glory, that controlling the lives of trillions, I want to control the lives of trillions more," he says, quietly. "But I dream sometimes, have nightmares, about what it must have been like in the days of the Imperium. And almost all of humanity labors under this tyranny, under this misery. I know what it was like. Grandmother told stories. So why shouldn't we strike out? Why shouldn't we conquer if by conquest we bring freedom? A billion innocents die today under the thumb of the Imperium, and a billion more will die tomorrow."

"A hundred billion. A trillion. Probably more," she says, because she has to be honest and this is the honest truth.

"Where, then, is the urgency? Where, then, is the passion?"

She is tiring, for who is saying anything new? She cannot fully condemn the blood that will be shed if he gets his way, for did she not drown in a lake of it to control one planet, and then an ocean of it to rise further? Yet for all the things she can believe, all the limits of all of this, she cannot believe that what she has built is worse than what came before, for the blood always flows one way or another.

But she did not conquer the Koronus Expanse so much as she united it.

And all of this does not matter, because she is a dying old woman who wants to lay down besides Yrliet, to do nothing more than to know she is there, and eat all the foods she ever loved. Selfish. Selfish.

She does not speak, and so he continues, "I know I have… you've tired of me. You even appointed that officer, Partec, as one of your potential heirs, adopting him, and he--"

"They," she supplies.

"Yes, sorry, they… they're barely thirty! They don't have an idea, they just have vague passions!"

Yes. This was so. But what are vague passions, when it came to… all of this? She envied their vague passions and their radical fire, even as she knows the fact that they were a naval officer made the other heirs fear a military solution to their status.

It is all too much. The time for coming up with an answer other than the one she'd decided on was long ago, months at least, years probably, decades possibly.

"I respect what you have said. I will think on it," she says. "But I am old, and weak, and dying. I… cannot give you an argument in the style you want." It is a confession, a confession of fading strength, but she is sure that he will not take advantage of it because to do so would be to risk everything.

But still, some part of her is worried. But she ignores it.

"I am sorry," he says.

"Oh, child, so am I."

The galaxy is not as the humans think it is. It is not a thousand carefully divided parts, but one chaotic whole. And it is in this chaos that, as She Who Thirsts stalks, the Aeldari must find something to center them. This is what a Path is, a guiding star, a focus, an obsession of sorts, something that defines who they are--rigid, perhaps, restrictive at times. But it is necessary.

Yrliet has been on the Path of the Outcast for centuries. But what does this mean? She shares little enough with dozens of different kinds of outcasts. Some are pirates, some are explorers, some were already fascinated with other species before they became outcasts, and of course some are criminals just barely spared worse. But there is no evil an Aeldari of a craftworld can do that denies them the right to a Path, however short or long it is.

For the last five-hundred years, the orienting star overhead, by which Yrliet has walked, has been her Elantach. Aeldari live far longer than humans, but five-hundred years is still something, and when she met her Elantach, she was young. Most of her life has been spent in the orbit of Tessara von Valencius.

When she dies, this will change. By now the fact of death has seeped into every moment, the beautiful and the grotesque. Everyone she passes looks at her more sharply.

She is no fan of humans, and she certainly does not think many of them are worth much: but she understands them just a little bit better after all this time. Some are wondering what she will do next, and perhaps even a few dream of what horrors they might do to her without Tessara protecting them.

It will be an act of shedding her skin to become someone new. She wants to ask Tessara about it, because once long ago Tessara abandoned a name that was not on her Path and took up a new one. But then, she also once told, in a meditative vision, of how she had hunted each and every person who had tortured her down and seen to their end, so that none would remember that old name. So that it would be truly dead.

Yrliet does not think she could erase herself from the memories of everyone. Millions of Mon Keigh still living have seen her, and while humans are forgetful in their transience, she knows that this cannot be erased entirely and she does not want it to be.

She does not care about the details, anymore than she did centuries ago. She does not care if they know that she broke her Soulstone for her Elantach, and centuries later her Elantach finally tracked down a replacement and gave it to her carefully, delicately. She does not care for the details to get out.

But a part of her wants it known, that there was a bright star and that star could draw even an Eldar, and that--

"Oh, pardon me, ma'am, but I was wanting to ask you something."

Yrliet looks down to see a short human woman standing there, nervously. She recognizes the woman as one of the organizers, who also works with the on-board diplomats for when Tessara needs someone to go down to the surface of a planet for polite conversation. Or when she's too busy doing less than polite conversation. Yrliet does not, however, remember her name. Nor does she care to, truly.

"I know it is… we can all hope for the best when it comes to Lady Tessara, but we know that she has begun a decline where… if you please accept my apology, it seems as if she may not--"

"My Elantach is dying," Yrliet interrupts, rather than allowing this woman, as so many humans do, to dance around mortality for ten minutes rather than admitting the fact of how brief most of them truly are. "She does not have long."

(Neither know it, but there are seventeen days remaining.)

"I cannot feel the weight of your sorrow, yet it is so," the woman says… in the tongue of the Eldar. "Which is why I must ask you, what is the habit of the Craftworld Eldar, when one they care for dies? We are trying to arrange the funeral."

She knows, then, that these are followers of Giselle Valencius, the eldest of Tessara's two blood daughters, and the one who Yrliet knows best. She is a hundred and sixty-two years old, and grew up fascinated by Yrliet and the Aeldari, learning the language and then many others, and believing that the species could all live, if not in harmony than at least in peace. She has made many treaties of peace between the Expanse and Xenos already, and spends time on Janus, and is a strange girl indeed but one that Yrliet could not help but feel some small connection to.

Another of the heirs, and more politics, but.

It also sounds genuine. It is likely both. To hold a funeral that includes Yrliet is to make it clear that the Expanse is not solely for humans, even if it is mostly so.

"An Eldar cannot be seen to grieve. Seen to mourn. There is a Path of Mourners, and so those who loved them march alongside, for each dead, one on the Path of Mourners in a Procession. This person," Yrliet says, crispy. "Wails. Gnashes teeth. Shows everything that the others cannot. They are not to cry, or even to frown, let alone to tear at their garments as a Mourner does. They proceed along, their outward feelings… represented by them. There are songs, sung as one marches, of death and all that has been lost and all that the living then. And then their spirit stone is…"

Yrliet stops.

Because she does not know what will happen to that bright soul. If her Elantach were an Eldar, she could imagine holding her soulstone and knowing what was to come. But this is not so. Is there any point in staying? Is there any satisfaction in leaving?

Grief, grief that she is not to show, steals over her, grabs her so tight that for a moment she cannot help but imagine Isha's captor, the song he sings: give up, hope is nothing, be joyful and rot into nothing, rot rot, rot into nothing.

But she is not tempted, just reminded. Her Elantach is not a creature of despair. If anything, it is her cunning, plotting mind that is likely to get her in trouble.

"I'm sorry," the woman says.

So is Yrliet. But she can hardly say this.

It begins slowly. A few tools are put down early, but then it begins to spread. Within a day half of the worker clans are on strike, or rather work-limiting. They do enough work to maintain the ship so that it will not explode, and so that none of the systems are vulnerable, but no more. And then within a day after that more than half. It grips everyone, and all at once the power of the enforcers, those that still have power, slips from their fingers. And while within the worker clans their enforcers are divided, there is a vote in many of them.

By the fourth day, the entire vessel has shut down. Nobody quite knows what the demands are, or rather many do not believe them.

It is absurd, it is strange, and there is something that none of them want to do. None of them want to disturb Lady Valencius. The word has gotten out that her mood, while not foul, is at least more prone to delicacy and frustration than it might once have been. And why would it not be? Who ever thought of the death of the Lady who had run the Koronus Expanse as anything but a distant possibility? Plenty of people, but few of them liked to linger on it.

Even now, there are beautiful afternoons. There are fifteen days left, and this lazy afternoon, Tessara rests her head in Yrliet's lap. It is a gesture of comfort sought, and nothing else, and Yrliet strokes her hair and reads Exodite poetry, in its native tongue, gently caressing each word. Tessara repeats a word, here and there, her accent almost unnoticeable, and there is that same gentleness.

The first time they saw each other as two souls, it was over trying to pronounce a word and seeing that it is more than just a word.

"...Each hour and each minute, creeping down like strangle-vines, comes
The knowledge that to live is to die, that nothing can live unless
It is part of, not a tapestry, but an ecosystem.
You cannot lose a piece of a tapestry. A knit blanket cannot be laid out
Upon the grass to settle in and watch the beauty of an untouched world
If even one square is missing.
But a square can go missing.
In this wilderness that is
a galaxy and a single atom.
Each piece has its place and all of nature its glory, and its nature is
To end, one day, and to begin again in some new form;
So is the way it has been said, and in the endless cycle that nature keeps
The unaging eye sees this as so.
But do the flowers, from their view, come back in the Spring?
Or do they die and there is eternal winter and nothing else and then
Long after, long ages after, another birth
yet not a rebirth…"

Yrliet is frowning by the end. She is reading in order, mostly, but Tessara has asked her to skip ahead, once or twice. None of these are new poems for them.

"You can tell why she was eventually exiled," Tessara says, softly. "It is not a comforting thought, if you are an Eldar."

"And it's comforting to you?"

"Of course it is," Tessara says, without hesitation, without guile. "I'm afraid of death. I'm afraid of what comes after. But if that 'after' is a reincarnation, some starting over, I would be even more afraid. If there's a pleasant afterlife, I would enjoy that, if there is nothing, I would accept that, but… I don't want to leave you, but I am this meat too. I have many regrets, but not…"

Yrliet feels the pain of loss, always. She lives with the fact that she's lost her home and built instead a home in a fleeting person who is already going to leave her after a time that is not a blink of an eye even for the Aeldari, but is truly not that long. It has been most of her life, and she will have to move on.

It is 'melancholy', to use a human word that has many Eldar equivalents.

"Not that. I do have a poem, though, I've been thinking of. I'm not much of a writer, but I have been considering it. The Wolves of Fenris do it, but those kinds of poems are nothing like what I am, but." Tessara shrugs and smiles. "Would you hear it? I'm thinking of the meeting I'll have to go to tomorrow, when I wrote it. Dying in the saddle, as always, I suppose."

What other answer can there be? She hears, and takes it in, and considers it.

The rule of Kings is an Orgyn trying to delicately grip a precious glass flower. Inevitably, no matter how well-meaning, no matter how kind, the glass flower will shatter and the pieces will never be able to be reassembled quite the same again. There is too much strength, too much power, packed too tightly and with too little control and understanding.

What is this poison at the base of all of this, this doubt in people that leads one to place all possible trust in a single person, instead? What is it to rule? What is it to serve? The Imperium exists on it, but then again so does almost every Xenos race they've been able to find. Something in the base workings of the galaxy itself seems to deny the right to be anything more than a better or worse King.

Or does it?

Is it that one has spent too long trapped, that a fish only knows water and a Hive Kid only corpse starch and scrabbling and staring up at the wealth and abundance above? Vatatzes is famous for its mosaics, made of Tessera, tiles that form some grand and beautiful whole when put together, and the girl names herself after them, because she wants to imagine herself a tile in some grander thing. It is purest greed, this desire to remake oneself in the image of a glory that is founded on blood. The girl is greedy, she murders the one who shapes her in the image she wants, lest the secret of the shaping get out, as if there is something shameful about the shaping, or as if it is not the case, perhaps, of all people that they carve themselves out of the world.

This greed, this lust for power, is a defining feature of the rule of Kings, and if you do not have it you will lose everything you love. Of course, if you do have it, you will struggle to love anything more than you do power. Can you succeed? Is it a success that matters, against a thousand thousand thousand dead by your hand indirectly or directly?

At what point is the problem not that the galaxy needs better, kinder rulers, and that the galaxy perhaps should not have them. But where does that place the girl?

Even if a King can realize that royalty is obsolete, even if they could, then, realize that something must be done about it, a ruler on their deathbed has so very little power.

This is the truth of it: what little she has done, what small starts there are to be gleaned, still lead down a rocky cliff to nothing.

This is a fear, and this fear must truly have some truth in it.

It is a scene that will be recreated and celebrated. It will become a sort of religious touchstone of a political ideology, of Valencianism as it is and as it might be.

On one side is Lady Tesser von Valencius, sitting in her chair, eyes remarkably bright. It is not that at any point her mind has lost any of its luster, and so there is a deceptive vibrancy to her.

On the other side is a rough-hewn man, tall and better built than a clan worker might have been centuries ago, dressed in his best. It is a sort of suit-robe, green and black and gold, and he looks around at the bridge with surprise. He did not expect to get this far, but he has demands that he knows the Lady has not heard.

"The workers of the ship are striking," she begins, thoughtfully. "You… look familiar, but pardon me if I do not know your name."

"No pardons are needed at all," he says, for now is not the time for defiance even if their demands were not what they were. "I am surprised I even look familiar. I'm Horatio Newcomen."

"Ah!" she says, and smiles with the triumph of one pulling from one's memory banks a name. "Your father was James Newcomen, then?"

His father had been a foundling recruited onto the ship on a planet he no longer remembers, and owes everything to Lady Valencius' kindness, or owed because he is dead now.

"Yes, he was," he says, shocked. "But. We're here with demands."

"Demands. Yes. I understand," she says, and she leans in. "What are your demands?"

"Minimal work for the next… however long it takes. A semi-holiday, enough work not to cause any problems but no more."

There are sounds in the background, scoffs and gasps. There is always something to do, alway a reason to keep up the work. A ship is a truly vast thing, and its operations could always be improved.

"However long it takes?" she asks, instead.

"Prayers for your salvation from this disease," he says, earnestly. "We want to pray for our deliverance, so that you can continue to guide and lead us as you have for so long. But if we're working, we can barely find time to pray, barely find time to hope for a miracle."

"Would you have the enforcers make everyone who gets the work off go straight into the chapels?" Tessara asks, and her eyes are wide now. There is something dangerous here, but he cannot tell what.

"No, no. But I am sure most will go despite this."

"You pray for my health?"

"I do, and many do, Lady." She does look better than he feared. Not well, but he's seen people who look like her limp on for months, years more. And he is sure that her limping on will look like others' running.

"Then I can concede, but it must be protected," she says, so simply. "Those who wish to make it simply a holiday must be free to do so."

Free, she might say, from official censure. But there is no doubt that many will look down on those who celebrate when she is dying. But she leans forward and adds, "I am… gratified for the care."

She is loved, or rather Lady Valencius is loved.

Herself is loved by a much smaller circle of people, whose opinion matters far more.

But… she cannot deny it.

In fourteen days she'll be dead, but today she still grips tight the power.

The problem with dying is that it truly is dying. If Tessara is told she has two weeks to live, as if there is some grand clock counting down, then she does a little paperwork and spends every day with Yrliet. But it is not so. The bad days already outnumbered the good ones, when it came to her health, in that final year.

Now the terrible ones outnumber the bad ones. She steals hours, with the desperation of that thief boy she has long since left behind. She does what she can to survive, and the prognosis worsens, she moves inexorably and yet painfully slowly close to her death.

She has ten days left when she feels a little better, when her body lightens and some last burst of life blooms, like the corpse-flowers on a world facing Exterminatus. She knows it will not last, and so do the doctors, but the people of the ship celebrate, and redouble their prayers. It is a strange holiday, when you mourn someone you do not know and yet celebrate that which you still have.

It is an odd kind of thing.

It is also odd, the way that they begin preparing for a funeral not knowing when it is going to be used, but knowing it will happen soon.

She has outlived or moved beyond almost everyone who will mourn her as a person rather than as a ruler. But she has still a few days left.

When there are eight days left, they suggest a reading of her will. She considers it and refuses, and instead calls in people to read to her from other books, and asks Yrliet for what aid she can provide. She is not yet bedridden, but she conserves her energy to shuffle around in a walk to keep her strength up and in baths and indeed in visits in which her soul and the love of her life mingle and walk and for a moment are a century old again.

She comes up with more poems, or remembers some she's written before to herself, and recites them for Yrliet while Yrliet asks if they are truly poetry. They seem more like a speech. Where is the flow, where is the harmonious whole? Where is any of it?

She listens anyway.

Tessara speaks and knows she is almost not heard at all. Her voice is weak, her organs are apparently again moving towards the inevitable.

Just about the only consolation is that she signs very few long-term documents at this point. For the first time in centuries she is not directly responsible, personally responsible, for some atrocity or hard measure or desperate and painful reform. Just the routine paperwork that someone signs no matter what.

It makes her want to sit up, pull herself together, and get her hands bloody and dirty once more just so that she can say she died in the saddle, riding over the innocents of the land, crown affixed upon her head.

But no, she has other things she loves more than power, and she knows that this is the only reason she has been able to do any good at all in the sector.

She listens to the reading, she tries to relax, and she tries not to count her hours. She tries not to consider how few of them she has left. At some point, days will become inefficient to measure what remains of Tessara von Valencius.

But that day is not it.

The Chaplain comes to her on a bad day, two days before the last good day, and stands at her bedside and prostrates himself. "I ask you, no I beg you, Tessara von Valencius, please make your peace and confess, make known your beliefs, make it clear that you are an Enemy of Chaos, so that none may… misinterpret your occasionally heterodox opinions."

Not heretical, not treasonous, not apostate, not any number of things. She has been called all of them. Yet officially at least, the Koronus Expanse believes in something like the Emperor. Some of it. There is no consistent policy, nor even a consistent vision of religious freedom… not that there could be. She's seen what Chaos does, and she would do more than just die to fight against it.

But she'd also seen what the Imperium did. She'd seen people blindly and fanatically worshiping a Throne of Skulls and calling it the Emperor. When faced with that, with the fact that many of the worst fanatics could blithely not care about starvation and disease, could revel in blood, and live on worlds where the powerful could seek whatever pleasures they wanted but…

All of this meant that she did not see, as many others did, the worship of the Emperor as a secure shield against all corruption.

The Emperor had existed, and it was quite likely He still existed in some form because she had long since gained a basic understanding of how the Warp worked. It was also the case that even more than her he subsisted on murder. It is a remarkably terrible metaphor made flesh, the fact that billions had been sacrificed to him, Psykers torn from their homes and made slaves to the Empire only to be sacrificed to preserve what she could only understand as a lie: not that the Emperor had ever existed, that was a truth, but that everything could simply stay the same forever.

The Emperor had lived, the Emperor had died, and she doesn't like being reminded of the fact that all rulers devoured innocents to survive. She condemned an entire planet to ad-hoc Exterminatus in her thirties, and it was not the first time she'd made a choice similar to that. (Every Hive World was a nightmare in which every choice seems to be an atrocity, and this includes the one she was born on and took control over with ruthless efficiency. If there is any good she can point to, unalloyed, it is that there are essentially not Hive Worlds as it was once understood anymore. Not perfect, but better.) Nor was it the last, and everything was on a larger scale with these things. Everything was so big.

"Why should I try to clarify myself, when I will be misunderstood no matter what I say?" she declares. "I believe what I always have, because I am perhaps too old to be making new enemies."

"New enemies, like whom?" the Chaplain asks. His voice is gentle, but he sounds afraid.

"Who would not be an enemy depending on how I framed things? I've always known who my clear enemies are, and you know what they are," she says, and she knows she will say no more. There is value in silence, in not being known, and she does not have the strength to yell out some great truth.

No, she does not have any strength at all. She's afraid of what will await her after she dies, but she knows that she both deserves it and doesn't. Nobody deserves what the Warp has to bring, and so she does not deserve it. But if she was someone who did believe that evil should be punished by evil, then she would clearly deserve suffering.

A part of her fears it more than anything. But a part of her does not care. "Just understand that I am an enemy of Chaos, and everything else falls behind this. I do not want to confess, I want my will to speak for itself, and if you do not understand that then there is nothing to say."

She has six days left to live, but she cannot know that she has decided that length, that this late in the game she has shortened her own span some unknowable number of days by saying this to this person, in this way.

It is nice to think there is no choice, because the end of the story is the same. But it is not true.

She walks along a set path, even if it changes every so often. By now she walks slowly, a shuffle that nonetheless still manages to get her where she is going with reasonable certainty. Her eyes still dart as they would have centuries past, for places to hide. But she does not have any weapons beyond a las-pistol at hand. She does have guards, but as it turns out they are not enough. She turned a corner, and two men leapt at her.

"Heretic! Repent through death!"

There is no repentance without death. She doesn't believe this. But she knows it's a convenient thing for a monster to believe.

She turns towards the Imperial loyalists, falling back, as a las-gun blast catches her in a near-hit that still burns at her shoulder and a third man surges forward with a cudgel.

Yrliet's surging forward, shooting on the run, and the cudgel topples and slams into her arm, because the man wielding it dies and his body falls on Tesserae.

In just a few moments, the assassination attempt is foiled, and she stands there, coated in blood.

"Well," she says, and looks around. Lady Valencius is shaking, her body unable to stand up to the kind of stress that she used to live in all the time. There are days she goes to sleep and wakes up thinking she'll have to face another gang challenge and needs to draw her stub-pistol before she gets out of bed. The spirit remembers, the body remembers, the mind remembers, but none of them are enough. "That is…"

And then her knees buckle, and she has to catch herself on Yrliet's arm, reaching out. "Unfortunate," she mutters.

She closes her eyes against what she knows is coming.

The investigation, the hunt, the witnesses, perhaps the scapegoats or perhaps the truth. She knows that this goes deeper than just one person. But it may not go much deeper.

She is uncertain.

It is the better part of the day before the horrible, terrible story becomes clear. The Chaplain complained of her non-answer to a friend of his, who got drunk in an Orthodox Bar and spilled a mangled, untrue version of the story. Then a small sub-sect of Ultra-Orthodox Imperialist Radicals, numbering exactly eight people total, took it in their head to assassinate her. They beat up and killed that drunken friend just a day or two after her mistake, and took her clearance to slip through the defenses for a single ill-fated, pointless attack on a symbol of what they hated.

It is pathetic, and worse.

She knows that the Orthodox Imperium believers are not truly orthodox by this point. They'd be seen as thoughtlessly and absurdly progressive by the "standard" believers, let alone the zealots and fanatics, of the days when Tessara first found her place in the Koronus Expanse. Even on the planets where they are most prominent, they are no longer nearly as powerful and influential, making up some percent of the religious division but not more than that, and on some planets and places, they all but do not exist.

She allows these religious minorities, who by this point might as well be cultural minorities as well, to live and survive as they will. There are about two or three hundred on her ship, a truly tiny minority, some of whom resent her and some of whom don't think about her at all.

And now they're all at risk. At least, the ones on the ship. A Sector-wide Orthodox hunt was unlikely to happen because of this, and she is reasonably sure that none of her successors are likely to do so… though she also knows she will not be around to check.

But that is the thing. She can decree that they are not to be touched, beyond those of this micro-cult. But she remembers a day long, long ago.

When she tried to save Aeldari at Yrliet's urging, before love was there, when there was only duty, it nearly destroys her.

She did a thousand clever things, splitting them up, spreading false rumors of where they were being kept, opening her own room to them and guarding it well and sleeping elsewhere, rushing straight through the Warp at the most expedient route. She faced near-mutinities every day, fighting for survival and risking everything for people who did not themselves believe that she was a person, and probably never would. It was the right thing to do, and she came close to die a dozen time.

All of that, and most of them were killed in attacks, often suicidal attacks. One in five Aeldari that she tried to rescue survived to be taken to the place they sought. If she had tried even a little bit less, it would have been zero.

She could do this perhaps, with great care, order a course heading towards a planet where the Orthodox would be accepted if not beloved, and defend them with her life and all of her power, and face even some small chance of mutiny in her own name, from people who say they love her but defy her in this. She might do this in some other world, but she knows she will not live long enough.

So she stares at her Chaplain in the room, as he knees, red-eyed. "I… I…" he says.

"You what? You doom hundreds of lives by your actions?" she asks, and it is bitter. Around her are doctors and guards and Yrliet at her back. "Now I must act, in my last days, to protect the Orthodox from persecution, and I do not know if I can do it. I do not know if I have the strength and time to shelter them. You have devastated those you were in religious sympathy with, and gotten your own friend killed. I cannot… I cannot know if you even care about any of that. What did I say that was so worthy of rebuke? That I would stand by the stances I had made in life, rather than making further enemies by clarifying?"

"Elantach," Yrliet says, in a tongue most people here do not know. "You will exhaust yourself, trying to save those who are not worth your time. Your soul shines bright, brighter than that of a thousand others of such narrow minds--"

"If it does, and it is you who are saying it, this is because I do value them," she says, and it is an old argument. At the end of the day, the wry saying that an Aeldari will kill a billion Imperials to save a single Aeldari, and that Imperial will kill a billion Imperials to kill one Aeldari, is not entirely untrue. At her worst moments, Yrliet has simply extended onto her something like honorary Aeldari status, and thus worthy of endless sacrifice if it preserves her. At her best, she hopes that Yrliet will be able to be someone who does not turn her back on either her people or humanity.

She cannot give Yrliet orders. She cannot tell her what she is to become now that she is dead. She can only hope and trust.

"If I did not value them, I would not shine. If I did not seek something better… then all of this would not merely be mostly useless, but entirely so." Mostly, she knows, is her own standard as much as anything.

In a language the rest could understand she says, "He is not to be killed, and actions should be done, written up, to save what can be saved. It is triage, but the wound is deep and… I will need to talk to Azher." She needs to get promises. "And my Seneschal." She needs to get reassurances. "And the head tech priest." She needs to get, and convey, facts. She is sick at heart and wants, truly, both to live and to be able to die in peace.

In the saddle? What a joke.

She has three full days left to live.

The shadows creep up and up, and with them all the old fears and terrors, as she considers it again. She's written words, a sort of lineless poem, that compares herself to an Orgyn, a monster, a tyrant. Now it feels just a little bit selfish, just a little bit trite. Oh woe and weep and to the rack she goes, the ruler of over a trillion lives, if not more. Perhaps far more than she can even know for all that censuses are important. Oh, she thinks she has not done enough or has done too much, and it is her privilege to be able to doubt herself like this.

The shadows grow, and that is inevitable because that is what light brings.

She can pace a little bit not much. She sits a lot of the time, or walks from desk to chair to desk. "Yrliet, I am weary of this." She is hunched over some last paperwork. Her vision is not failing, and she has given orders that she is to go through all the paperwork that is backed up, up to yesterday, and then the rest is to be held. She can feel that she does not have long now. She doesn't know how long she has, but she is now almost certain--sick at heart certain--that she will not leave even a week's backlog for others.

And still, she fights. There is something like an animal at the root of all beings, that does not let itself curl up and die without at least trying to fight.

"Elantach, you don't have to do it," she says.

"I do… but perhaps not now," she says, and she cannot help her anticipation, the thread of joy at the thought. "Could you take me, to meditate?"

"Yes, I can, Elantach. My mind, or yours?"

"Yours. I want to see something bigger, some pattern so big that I understand that I am small, because right now I feel far too large, far too connected to a world I cannot control. Please, show me in context, show me in perspective, show me your mind," she says, and she knows the words are an inducement of sorts. Yrliet looks like she'd almost consent to a kiss, something she does only every so often. Under their mutual understanding that it will go no further than that, and even that… only on occasion.

But what is a kiss against the stunning, stripped-bare intimacy of being in someone's mind or having them in yours? She thinks she'd think this even if she's the sort of person to be interested in sex. But thankfully for both of them, she isn't.

Yrliet finds the wheelchair, and they go to privacy. Each moment like this is worth something to her, something worth fighting for even if she did not have the animal, desperate need to survive.

By the next day, though she cannot know it for sure, it is enough that one might begin to count it as hours. Thirty-seven hours are left when she wakes up early in the morning, before 'dawn', to vomit. She is bedridden, and the shadows creep every closer. But still, despite this, she drinks down what soup that her stomach can manage and tries to keep up the conversation and the writing. She is bedridden, now, and she is a bed-writer as well, considering her last lines, considering her paperwork and having it read to her if she cannot find the strength to physically sign it. The doctors are crowding all around, but Yrliet watches over all of it without reacting.

By the next day, then, it leaks across the ship. It leaks beyond the ship to the system. It will leak further than that, given only a little bit longer.

She knows this. Her mind is not going. She is as sharp as ever, when the pain is not overwhelming, when another bit of her body starts to fail. So she is starting to lose that edge, that had taken her so far, that had…

She knows she cannot mourn it. If she mourns herself, if she does something as silly as mope, then she should just end it now.

The day passes slowly, and people begin to shuffle in to say their goodbyes. They shuffle in, and say their piece, and then they are gone. She hopes it brings them some peace, because it annoys her. She realizes all at once that how she wants to die is to drive them all away and have only Yrliet around. An animal curls up in some dark burrow and knows it is the only safety they have left. Yrliet is that safety.

The day starts to wind down towards its end, but though she can nap, she cannot sleep. There are twenty-two hours left when she has an argument with her doctors over the mixture of drugs to give her. She doesn't want to just drift off. She wouldn't trust it, wouldn't trust someone to try something… she doesn't know why she's scared. But she wants Yrliet to be there, and wants to know Yrliet is there, when the end comes.

The fight is exhausting, but she wins. She wins very little, but she has to fight.

When there is eighteen hours left, a man who has not been young in decades, but is not truly that old, cries. He cannot help it. He almost doesn't expect it, because as much as he cares he thought he was cried out months ago. But he thinks of the world to come, and still cannot but wish that it did not have to happen as it does… and hopes it happens as he wills, because he does not know what is in that Will.

When there are thirteen hours left, a prospective Tech-Priest rolls his eyes at the endless debates about proper procedures for the funeral, and the places that the Mechanicus might have in ensuring the funeral is awe-inspiring.

As if she is going to do anything other than whatever her lady love wants. He doesn't care that she's a Xenos-fucker, he really doesn't, but Armand is annoyed at when people forget that and so think she'll want a traditional Imperium funeral.

There are eleven hours, and an Aeldari listens to the stories once more of a funeral that her Elantach interrupted, of a great pirate filled with scheming and hate. She is crying, weeping and inconsolable. She might grow happier in a few hours, but right now she knows and hates that she'll be the same. Some great figure mourned by people who hate each other, a great figure who is nonetheless hateable in all the evil he had done to the world. Pious? Oh yes, but what is piety in a pirate?

She worked with and then defanged and controlled the pirates long ago. She is the biggest pirate of them all, and can accept no other power. The Koronus Expanse is both larger and smaller than it has ever been thanks to her efforts. So she knows her funeral… her funeral will be all of that and worse.

She will not be there, her Elantach.

But Yrliet thinks she might have to stay for it. Stay for it, before deciding whether to flee or not.

Her Elantach asks again, but she is too sunk in self-pity for the moment to see the doubts.

The chaplain prays again, for his own life and for hers. He cannot hear the news, but he knows that time is running short. He has heard that there have been three murders of Orthodox believers in the last few days, driven by a desire for revenge. One of the dead is a child. None of them are behind the attack.

He prays for their souls just as fervently as he does for his strange… heretic(?) Lady, the one who might have protected him from what he knows will happen as soon as he dies.

The boy would rather be doing something else on his knees, or indeed studying or learning about sniping, then praying. But he directs his prayers because he has no other choice. She always seems such a strange and distant figure, the Lady Valencius, and yet he knows there are things he owes her and things she owes him, by her own reckoning. It is a reckoning that he perhaps shares when it is convenient with him, this child with no family, who seems to have appeared from nowhere and carved himself out of a girl. He cannot know how similar he truly is to her, because all these years, all these years.

Five hours remain.

The knives are sharpening, metaphorically, as three hours remain, though it is just a metaphor at this point. So many things have been put into place.

Two hours.

Far off, NOMOS knows himself the guarantor of a will. Far off Nomos has been able to use what vast intellect he has to guess, if not the exact moment. His calculations are slightly off, and it is in this moment that he begins to mourn. It is not so bad a guess, as without the assassination attempt he would have been off a week in the other direction, for that is how random the galaxy truly is.

One hour, and it is all she can do to stay awake. But then Yrliet speaks. "Sleep. I will join you. Sleep, I will join you." She is singing a song in a language she has known since birth, she sings a lullaby and all the crimes and and the evils and all the fears seem to fade away. They are not gone, but they are not her Elantach's to solve. It is not, her Elantach had once said, the job of any one person to create a better galaxy alone, but nor can they shuck the task. But now the burden rolls away.

Now there is nothing left, for good or ill, except the end.

Yrliet has spent the elantach's final days with her, and when the time comes for death to place its gentle hand on the Rogue Trader's shoulder, she is there.

(A part of her almost wishes she could see the soul leaving. Another part of her imagines filling the rest of her days searching for the soul that is about to fly away to preserve it by any means. It is no uglier than anything.)

Her Elantach is sleeping, and so she sinks into her world one last time. Her Elantach, young again, old again, looks at her and smiles.

(What they say is not for you, not for anyone but them. The final words are their alone, theirs to own, theirs to claim. Theirs to live and die with.)

Tears burn Yrliets skin, and then the dim light of the human soul finally fades and disappears beyond where she can reach it.

(Where it goes? Where it… what comes next. What…)

Yrliet touches the elantach's wrist to check her pulse.

(A pulse that ruled a trillion lives and more. What is it now?)

She closes her eyes, sighs, and… tries to decide what to do from here, alone.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew6ef3nE-E4

This was inspired by a lot of things, including a bit of Sumerian history on the death of a King back then. At the end of the day, fundamentally, people have always been people and death has always been a fact we've lived with. So the death of Kings, the changing of the guard, the desperate love she has... this and everything are things perhaps to meditate upon, to think of.

Or not.

I can only hope that I've helped you feel something, and that what you've felt adds something to your day. Feel free to ask generalized lore questions too, though part of it is that the outcome and what comes next is meant to be unknown.

Of Graves, of Worms, and Epitaphs (Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader)

Of Graves, of Worms, and Epitaphs (Warhammer Fantasy: Rogue Trader)

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