Everqueen Reclamation - 63

Laurelorn

“You have done well here, my children,” Isha said as she, Meril and Kaia walked along one of the many entwined branches that served as a road-network of sorts for the tree-city where the Eonir lived.

Laurelorn was very little like Iyanden. Here, under the warm sunlight of a yellow star, there were no ruins. There was no aura of fear and despair that even Isha could not entirely quell. There was a sense of readiness, yes, for this world was not without its peril, but nothing like the grimness that the people of Iyanden wore about them.

(There was no shard of her father, buried below the skin of this world, whispering to her to give into her rage)

Children played in the streets, smiling and laughing. There were farmers at work in the fields below the city, guards on watch at various places. A bard nearby sat on a branch, strumming on his harp and singing. Two men, clearly deeply in love, were watching their daughter play, sitting with their hands entwined.

This world was alive, vibrant in a way that Iyanden had not been even after Isha had grown the World Tree and extended her blessings.

It felt good to see her children like this. Every little moment of happiness soothed some of her jagged edges, made some of Isha's despair fall away.

“Thank you, Your Serenity” Queen Meril replied from behind her. “But are you sure you wouldn't like a proper celebration? I have everything prepared for a festival-”

“Later, perhaps,” Isha waved a hand dismissively. For now, surveying her children's happiness under a cloak meant to keep her and her companions inconspicuous was more than enough.

Isha turned to the two women following her and considered the Exodite Queen, both body and soul. “You were one of my daughter's priestesses once, were you not?”

“I was,” Meril acknowledged quietly. 

“And you knew that the Emperor and I were coming,”

“I knew the Emperor was coming,” Meril corrected. “I saw that it was possible you might come, Your Serenity, but those visions were rarer, more faded. I hoped, but I was not sure. But the Emperor's arrival was a certainty from the moment that his son arrived upon our world.”

Isha felt a chill in the bones of her avatar despite the warmth of the sun. “What happened in the visions where I was not present?”

Meril smiled grimly as they resumed walking. “Calamity, for our world. The end, and the death. The slaughter of our people, the destruction of our World Spirit, this entire world reduced to a polluted husk where even the humans lived in misery, toiling for cruel masters.”

Anger surged within Isha, but she quelled it. It was not unexpected after all. “I am glad your visions did not come to pass.”

“So am I,” Meril agreed, as the trio passed a small theater of sorts, where some Eldar were putting on a show of acrobatics for an audience.

“And what of the boy?” Isha asked curiously. “Did you have any visions of him?”

“I did,” Meril acknowledged. “I knew that once he was here, his father's coming was destined.”

“I see,” Isha said soberly, her eyes passing over a small child who was riding on his mother's shoulders, giggling as she held him up. “Did that make it harder to deal with him?”

“It did,” Meril admitted. “I considered killing him, to at least deny the Emperor one of his generals in his crusade…but Kaia convinced me otherwise,” She cast a glance at her guard.

“Killing a child for something they might do was wrong,” Kaia said, her voice rough and deep compared to Meril's, but her blue eyes were hard as steel, almost defiant. “Killing him would not even save our world, so what would be the point? He was innocent, and remains so. It would have been a sin to kill him for the crime of existing.”

“I agree,” Isha assured her wryly. “I am glad you took him in and raised him well.”

Some of the tension seemed to leave Whitemane's shoulders at that.

“It is at an end, at least,” Meril said with a sense of finality. “The Emperor will take his son away, and we will not burn.”

“Yes,” Kaia agreed, though she seemed subdued.

“You are unhappy?” Isha queried her.

“He is my son,” Kaia replied. “I always knew this was temporary, but he is still the child of my heart, if not my blood. Even if he is the creation of a brutal foreign god that despises us, I raised him. I wiped his tears, fed him, and saw him grow. And in many ways, he remains a child, despite the accelerated growth. I know it is the safest path for both him and Laurelorn but I will not pretend I am not grieved to be parted from my child.”

“I understand,” Isha acknowledged. How could she not? She had lost so many of her own children after all.

At last, they stopped in front of a shrine. It was a relatively humble thing, a squat building carved from wood, decorated in silver, with crescent-moon shaped lanterns decorating it.

A Shrine of Lileath.

Isha stared at it for a long moment, visions of her daughter coming to life. An infant with silver hair clutching at Kurnous's fingers with tiny hands, a toddler in her lap laughing as Isha fed her, an adolescent girl sitting quietly as Isha wove her hair into braids.

A grown woman, proud and fierce and haughty, the queen of a divine empire.

That same woman, weeping and sorrowful, begging her parents for forgiveness for what she had wrought with her prophecies.

Not all those memories were real, of course. Lileath had sprung into being as a woman fully grown after Isha had finished nurturing her god-seed, but at the same time, the Warp was where the lines between dreams and realities blurred. There were stories of Lileath of children, and so Isha remembered raising her.

And those memories were real to Isha, if nothing else, for she had adored her daughter, her beloved Hope.

The daughter who was dead, devoured by that wretched creature.

Would Sai’lanthresh conjure forth a daemon in her daughter's image as it had made one in her husband's? There had been that daemon who had sought to impersonate Lileath for a moment, which had been bad enough, but a creature actually made from Lileath's corrupted essence…

The thought was almost too much to bear.

“Your Serenity?”

Isha was shaken from her thoughts by Meril's voice, realizing the Queen and her guard were staring at Isha with concern. To Isha's relief, she had not lost control and allowed either the Huntress or her new aspect to slip forth again.

“It is nothing,” She said simply. “I was merely thinking of my daughter. Lileath would be proud of you, Meril,”

The Queen seemed taken aback by that for a moment, before her seemed to glow with pride, clearly overjoyed by the comment. “Thank you, Your Serenity.”

“Come,” Isha said, casting one last glance at the Shrine of Lileath before resuming walking. “Tell me more about the government you have set up here. You said that the other clan were coming?”

“Yes, Your Serenity,” Meril said following. “I am Queen, but I was elected by the other clans to serve as such for this entire world rather than just my own. Each clan rules its own territory on this world, and each clan chieftain will be eager to see you, but it will take some time for them to arrive. In the meantime, I hope you will also grace the Senate with your presence. They are only representatives of the clans, not their leaders, but they still help me govern and lead.”

“I see,” Isha said thoughtfully, mulling the system over. “Very well, I would be happy to meet the Senate after you have finished showing me around. But a private meeting, please, not a celebration just yet.”

“I will have them convene tonight,” Meril promised.

“Now…I understand you have also been attacked through your Webway Gate?”

The mood sobered at Isha's statement, both Meril and Kaia's eyes darkening.

“We have,” Meril confirmed grimly. “Ever since the Fall, there have been parties of raiders coming through, in search of slaves and riches. We repel them…but never without cost. They are remnants of the pleasure cults, and even the scraps of the Dominion's technology they hold are potent.”

“I see,” Isha said, a sense of bitter resignation settling on her. “Any refugees? Slaves escaping their masters?”

“A few but not many,” Kaia spoke up now. “From what we can tell, most of the slaves and the rest of the underclass are trapped in the deepest depths of the Webway, and with the damage wrought by the Fall, it is even more difficult for them to access a Webway Gate than it was before.”

“Of course,” Isha sighed. “I would like to meet those refugees, then.”

“Than can be easily arranged,” Meril agreed.

“And I will see what defenses I can create around the Webway Gate,” Isha said, rubbing a hand across her face. “Something that recognizes intent, perhaps, or at least will let you control passage through it more easily.”

Meril and Kaia looked surprised, then relieved. “If you can do that, Your Serenity, it would make us feel much safer.”

“I would be happy too,” Isha said gently, extending her senses out upon the world.

There were so many of her children here, almost a billion souls, each one a precious shining spark. It dwarfed Iyanden’s population effortlessly.

And then there was Laurelorn’s World Spirit, a great dragon whose hoard was the precious souls that had died on this world so far. Being anchored to the Materium, the Spirit was able to defend these souls from Slaanesh in a way that she and her family had not been able to protect the souls in their keeping.

And yet, both the living and the dead of Laurelorn combined were a paltry number compared to those of her children who were lost in the Fall.

So many dead, slavers and slaves alike, monsters and victims.

The culmination of a million years of falling down, down, down…

Isha would have loved to blame it solely on Khaine and Asuryan’s decisions, but that wasn’t true.

The Sundering and Asuryan’s Edict had been traumatic for her children, yes. Khaine’s slaughter of them, being abruptly severed from their gods…yes, it had been difficult.

But there had still been hope in the aftermath. Shattered, wounded, weakened and divided, her children had still been capable of kindness and heroism, of doing not only great things, but good things.

Then, the Dominion.

Forged by ancient warlords, those of her children so old they remembered the War in Heaven. They had burned with rage and bitterness and pride, and had sought to reunify the Eldar under one banner.

Their banner.

No matter the cost.

All those of her children that had opposed them had died, every nation and culture that stood in their way eradicated as they carved a bloody path across the galaxy.

Worse than that, they had slaughtered every branch of the Eldar that had formed in those long aeons since the War in Heaven. The Sylvaneth, the Umbraneth, the Lumineth, the Idoneth…all put to the sword for not fitting some false ideal of purity. The great tree of the many Pan-Eldar had been trimmed to the trunk by the time Dominion was finished.

And it hadn’t just been their bodies, oh no. The Dominion had utilized the most terrible of weapons, searing them down to their very souls and eradicating them for being impure. 

Of course, it had all been pure hypocrisy in the end. As the eons passed and the masters of the Dominion grew comfortable, their power unchallenged, they were happy to let the pleasure cults indulge in bio-engineering once more, on both the lucky and unluckiness. Their pet Haemonculi, those who bastardized her arts, had taken to fleshcrafting eagerly.

Sometimes, Isha saw far more of the Dominion’s founders in the Emperor than she cared to admit, even within her own mind. It was one thing to compare him to Asuryan or Khaine, but them…

And yet, the similarities were there. The budding obsession with purity while also using fleshcrafting of his own and employing so-called ‘mutants’ who were useful was the one that worried her the most.

But at least the Emperor had listened when she had tried to convince him otherwise. It had taken some convincing, but he had listened.

Isha exhaled slowly. There was still hope. She could save her children, and stop humanity from walking the same path as the Dominion had.

She had to.

“Take me to the Webway Gate,” Isha commanded Meril and Kaia. “I intend to begin my work immediately.”