The Emperor’s Angel of Death

“Don't know?”

Repeating these three words, Sotha laughed, teasingly said:

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“You didn't directly deny it, which means there's a possibility, right?”

Madail remained silent.

“Meaning you've also suspected it, but you can't access such core secrets, so you don't know. Hmm, I can understand. After all, neither Asuryan nor Szarekh would truly trust you.”

“What you think is your business.”

“Right, earlier you called me the husk of the Neverborn. Then that means you shouldn't be completely ignorant of the Grey Seer. I told you not to lie, or the consequences will be severe.”

“I really don't know anything about the Grey Seer. I only know about the spirit marrow that the Old Ones used to reconstruct Asuryan.”

“Oh, playing word games with me?”

Just as he was about to teach the other party a lesson, Sotha suddenly remembered that Oloron's recording mentioned that the Old Ones' servant, the Barathoni Lash, also knew about the spirit marrow.

Spirit marrow? Is that the truth about the Grey Seer?

“Then tell me, what is this spirit marrow?”

“My understanding is limited. I only know that it's a substance extracted from some singularity spaces in the universe, but only the Old Ones could access those mysterious regions. They exist outside of all space and time, in zero-entropy voids. That's all.”

“What's its relationship with blackstone?”

“I can only speculate that the manufacturing technology of blackstone is probably related to the singularity voids that produce spirit marrow to some extent, but the difficulty of the two is vastly different. At least the Necrons have never touched such mysterious substances related to the soul.”

“Then what's the relationship between the spirit marrow and me being the husk of the Neverborn?”

“Do you still need to ask the obvious?”

“I just want to ask.”

“Although there have been some changes, it can be basically determined that the strange energy clusters in your body that are gradually stabilizing are the spirit marrow. The Neverborn's consciousness core constantly uses this as an anchor to move between reality and the Warp.”

“What about Asuryan?”

“I don't know.”

“Then tell me what you do know.”

“I told you, I don't! Know!”

Sotha laughed and walked around the other party.

“Your little temper is flaring up? Get up. Since you're Asuryan's herald, you should know his personality well. Tell me, from your personal point of view, what kind of god is he?”

Madail stood up from the ground. Even so, he could barely reach Sotha's waist. Then, many strange expressions appeared on his withered and decaying face, eventually returning to calmness.

“It's meaningless to judge a god with the language of mortals, but if you insist on me saying it, the Old Ones must have given him too much mortality when they shaped him, perhaps to subdue the bestiality, or rather, the primal instinct, of the Neverborn's consciousness core. But the fact proves that this was a failure. Asuryan's divinity had to fight against his mortality and bestiality for a long time, which made his attitude towards the Aeldari race have a very contradictory external manifestation, and made the surrounding beings unable to understand many of his behaviors. Perhaps only Isha knew what he was thinking. At a certain period, Asuryan's divinity finally gained the upper hand, and it was at that time that he began to stay behind closed doors in the Celestial Palace. Overall, during the War in Heaven, he was a very fair, wise, and sometimes even sentimental god, often worrying about the survival and development of the Aeldari. In the period just after the end of the War in Heaven, he began to become a little confused, suspicious, and behaved erratically, and finally only indifference remained.”

Hearing this, Sotha felt that it sounded a bit familiar, as if it was somewhat similar to a certain being…

“Is Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God among the Aeldari gods, also a C'tan?”

“Yes, and he was personally captured by Asuryan, but he is not powerful. The Old Ones also retained some of their modifications to him, perhaps because he doesn't have the special abilities of the Neverborn.”

“Then what about the other Aeldari gods? For example, Isha, how did they come about?”

“These all come from the collective consciousness of the Aeldari who possess advanced psychic talents. The first to be born was Vaul, because the Aeldari race's initial duty was not as a warrior race, but as a craft race that created psychic armor for the front-line Kroks. Artisans were their most numerous profession, and Vaul was a psychic entity born from the Aeldari artisans' focus and intoxication with their craft. Also, because the Old Ones endowed the Aeldari with powerful reproductive abilities, the Aeldari women were constantly giving birth to offspring for a long time. Their worship of childbirth and their prayers for the health of their children gave birth to Isha, the mother goddess, and because in early Aeldari society, men were artisans and warriors, and the basic gathering and production occupations were all undertaken by women, Isha also became the embodiment of nature.”

“Oh? Can a collective consciousness produce gods?”

“Of course, it's not that simple. The Old Ones created so many lives, but the number of races that can reach the psychic sensitivity of the Aeldari is very few. Occasionally, some can surpass the Aeldari, but because of their respective defects, their numbers are small. Only the Aeldari have powerful reproductive abilities. Once their numbers reach a certain level, creating psychic entities is not that difficult.”

“You just said that the Old Ones used mortality to suppress the Neverborn's bestiality. Then does that also mean that there is also a mortality on me that is suppressing the Neverborn's bestiality?”

Madail pondered for a moment and nodded.

“It should be, but what kind of mortality can compare with the consciousness implanted by the Old Ones? Even Asuryan's mortality was slowly worn away in the end…”

Sotha did not answer Madail's question, but nodded thoughtfully.

At this point, the thread seemed to be faintly emerging. The Undying Star Neverborn is Asuryan, and it has always existed. It's just that in the past, Asuryan was suppressed by the mortality created by the Old Ones, but whether it was because the mortality and divinity conflicted or because the Neverborn's so-called consciousness core was too powerful, Asuryan's mortality was slowly worn away in the end. And what would happen once the mortality was worn away?

Would Asuryan become the Neverborn? But it also has its divinity. Logically speaking, it should be able to suppress the Neverborn. However, judging from the information obtained from the Fallen, the Grey Seer should be able to accommodate divinity…

Could it be that if only divinity remains, then it will merge with the Neverborn? Wouldn't that be great?

Or, once fused, what is born will be something else?

Anyway, it's obvious that Asuryan should not have made such a choice, otherwise it would not have arranged the Grey Seer and its subsequent series of events, but what exactly happened to it is still the most critical information. From Asuryan to the Neverborn to the current Grey Seer, there must be a very important process. Knowing this process can explain the most core goal of this plan.

As well as a key question—

Is Asuryan still there?

And the only one who can answer this question, as Madail said, is Isha, who can enter the Celestial Palace and was with Asuryan at the last moment of the Fall of the Eldar.