CHAPTER SIX -- WHETHER IN THE HEAVENS
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[map: 8-player fan-made map “Monastery” (3 vs 4).]
“I thought you were joking!” Watching Eria be surprised never ceased to amuse me greatly.
“So you didn’t foresee me even trying?” I made adjustments in my flight controls, leaving the cradle where the Arisen and the D’oru’kan had been born. My Orks were sleeping peacefully; my former Necrons humming along coherently in fair-togetherness. Not of my doing, of course, but I was doing my best to lead them. “Good! -- then you haven’t foreseen me failing yet?”
Now she was gritting her teeth. “This is insane.”
“No,
they are insane.
This is reasonable. Reason, and love, are greater than insanity. Though not by any creature’s power.”
“They will not cooperate with you. And when you must kill them -- “
“-- as I fully expect -- “
“-- then their souls will only go back into Chaos, reclaimed, to be put to use again!”
“And do the Eldar know of no way at all, to prevent a person’s spirit from slipping into the grip of Chaos, even when Chaos has hold of it?”
“......I refuse.”
“You refuse that they should be saved.”
“I refuse to use our soulstones. They are for us, to keep us from being claimed by Slaanesh.” I noticed she somehow felt comfortable now, naming She Who Must Not Be Named. Or maybe that was a sign of her distress.
“Can you make them without connection to yourselves?”
“No!”
“Can you make them in connection to me?”
“N.... .....”
“I am connected to ancient spiritual tech myself, including Eldari. And together your ancient spiritual technology from before the First Extinction, has helped to begin the recovery of the Orks.”
She swallowed. “...they...”
“The Orks aren’t chaotic? Or aren’t becoming less so?”
“...your filthy human traitors shall not touch the soul of one of the Eldar.”
“And I’m not asking for that. Am I?”
“If they touch your soul... I... we might lose you and I...”
“...will not have foreseen that?”
“Will be to blame.” That was an unexpected amount of sadness.
“I’m glad to hear you care so much about me now.”
“You are the hope I foresaw -- “
“Not really. But what you foresaw was that somehow I would lead into the undoing of the downward spiral, correct?”
“...yes.”
“And has that somehow changed?”
“... ....... No.”
“I appreciate your confidence. I won’t say you should trust yourself, or me, or even what you see. And I know you can’t trust my trust, even after all these years.”
I sensed her shrugging. “I don’t see this succeeding; but I infer it failing. And I don’t see such a failure affecting the goal that I have seen.”
“Fair enough! So: will you work with me? Because,” I told her sincerely, “I don’t think I can do this without you. Or even try to try! -- not without you.”
“My people will absolutely not understand. Or accept. I cannot accept it myself. But I will try to provide what you ask.”
“Thank you. I have sent ahead a small Arisen fleet to a church...”
“A circle? What kind?”

“No, a lord’s place. A cross, not a circle. I found some references to it years ago, before you found me. It dates back thousands of years, many thousands, and was bombed by the nascent Imperium as a heresy -- for it denies the Emperor as the ultimate authority. The Emperor tried to crush out all the embers of this fire, while taking upon himself the symbols and... affectations, let us say. That was a grievous mistake; and so the forces of Chaos were able to strike at him, and at humanity, as a result.”
“Oh.” She looked over the information on the sacred place I was showing her. “That symbol. I have seen it -- in my Forseeings.”

“Does that help you feel any better about what I’m planning to try?”
“A little. I suppose.”
“I found some Death Guard transmissions in our records, from their invasion of our cradle. I have sent an invitation, of sorts, along their communication line. I expect them to send a sizeable force to strike us down, and maybe also to find what we are searching for.”
“And
are you searching for something there?”
“Yes: the reconciliation of all things! -- whether things on the earth or things in the heavens!”
“....if you act as my shield, and the shield of my people... I will support you.”
“Thank you. So, let us see. It will be an experiment.”
“Working near Orks... it is an ill feeling.”
“You shouldn’t send your people out so far so quickly.”

“You should get your Warriors forward more quickly.”
“The Arisen are still Necrons: they don’t do anything quickly -- except melt away weak units.”
“So why didn’t you start forward with your Orks?”
“They like to rush and use a lot of troops, so I left them a little more room to pick up an extra resource mine.”
{Gamenote: The actual explanation is that any single-player skirmish must start in position #1, and I wanted to play the Necrons again for this mission since on a 3 v 4 fight I (rightly!) didn’t trust the allied AI to gear them up to survive as the shield wall properly!}
“So then, we shall scout,” she said. I very much disagreed with this idea, but... then she hissed. Backward.
“What?!”
“The enemy brought THEM! Our lost ones!”
“I know you must hate them being here; but it does make sense. The fallen marines have convinced the pirates to come and scout for them...”
“You cannot know the pain we feel, faced with their existence! -- their sin, our failure, dooming all the universe, all reality!!”
“They will not! And if we can bring down chaos in the galaxy, they will weaken and so repent. I hope.”
“They taunt us with our pain, with
their pain...”
“That doesn’t mean you should all rush out and -- good grief.”
{Annoyed Gamenote:

The AI gets a little better, once I shift over to the Armageddon module. I’m doing vanilla here so far.}
Their ferocious fighting, scouts and counter-scouts, did help bolster my scatterbrained orkan allies, until I could push forward warriors enough together to take over the line and, finishing the fight, move forward again and again.

Eventually, the Arisen scarabs built an assault base halfway to our enemy, from which we waited in defense, parrying enemy thrusts, as my allies wandered the map, taking down forward conquests from our foes.

As parties of elves and Orks trickled down the right side of the ancient abbey’s ground, toward the staging bases of the Death Guards and their lackeys, I pushed my squads of warriors, too, trying to at least protect my far-seeing tutor who, against her own expectations, tried to trust that something perhaps could be done for these men -- and for her twisted and miserable kin.

After the forward pyramid awakened and slowly followed afterward as a mobile artillery base, the end had come. We blasted their bases off the planet; I think the dark eldar actually took some chaos cultists captives as they fled!

But, more importantly...
“Was it worth it?” she snarled, hardly able to speak in her grief. “One hundred and ninety-nine souls -- gone! Stripped of their lives! We feel that more than a
thousand times worse than humans could ever feel!”
I almost reminded her that I had warned them not to go forward to scout. Instead, I pointed to her equipment. “Are these them?”
“... .....no.” She managed to be civil. “They are... several hundred Death Guards.”
“And so,” I said, “we can keep them, and any others we slay, here in safe-keeping. Buried like valuable treasure, so to speak. Until we find a way to bring their bodies back again. Giving them an uncorrupted life. Or less so anyway.”
“...and this could be done for our people, too. Our lost ones.”
“Yes; I would suppose more easily, really!”
“...you... we might be able to bring them home.”
“Maybe. I hope so.”
She thought for a while. And for a while again, as we packed our people together into our ship and rose away -- the symbol of the abbey fading beneath us.
“For our people,” she said, “I think we can manage something.
“For your people, however...
“...you will need geneseed.”