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She ran without looking back.
Why would she look back? Why would she be eager to see the glades who now bereft from her presence and sustaining will returned to nothingness? Why would she be eager to gaze upon the grim battlefield where they had lost hope and life? She knew what had transpired from their final defeat, she knew what would rise from her defiled corpse if she died at the hands of the tide of abominations. She couldn’t allow it. Her death, her true death would condemn her children to extinction, depriving them of the will to reproduce. Yet even this fate would be kinder than being corrupted, to have one most basic urges rewritten from the Sea of Souls. Her children were already damned from the moment of their birth now, destined to hell beyond hell for sins committed by their elders. She would not allow them to be corrupted in the womb by the whispers of the Dark Prince. Better to allow everything to burn in suicidal defiance than unleash that plague on the galaxy.
So, she ran, and she wasn’t alone. From the pantheon, there were only five gods who didn’t ran. Two of them were dead, slain by blade, poison and the forsaking of their altars. Asuryan and Ereth Kial, the Phoenix King and the Pale Queen were both ashes, both nobility and death destroyed beyond hope of salvation. From the ashes of the Firebird was born the Green Sun, from the fragments of the Lady the doom of the Eldar was forged. Khaine had been broken in the terrible battle, overwhelmed by the tide of foes. Yet even in death he didn’t summon the realm of brass and bone he had so often battled and loved in equal measure. Long had his receptacles been prepared for a glorious incarnation on the material plane. The irony that these weapons of war against Asuryan’s decree were no used as refuge for a warrior wounded in the defense of his people was not lost on Isha. As for the last yet free.
Cegorach the Laughing God had forsaken his divine mantle, hiding it in the pure laughter of children and in thousand sanctuaries across the universe so that the Dark Prince’s aspects couldn’t find them. He had diminished in stature and potency, renouncing most of his divine might to incarnate in the space-in-between of the labyrinthine Webway just as he had done in the great war against the star-hungry Yngir. There he would stay, evade notice and perhaps have the final laugh against the god their people had spawned. Thanks to him the Eldar would not forget how to smile and laugh at the universe’s torments for them. She didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse but it was something at least.
As for Kurnous her husband and love, he was lost and the thing sprung from his corpse hunted her without cease. So, she ran.
So, they all ran as quick as their legs could carry them. They dove deep into the waves of unreality imposing order by their willpower, crafting forests, mountains and seas they could jump across, running always running because fighting was of no more use and their death would mean so much worse than simple oblivion. They ran to the brothers of their victors. They ran without shame for they had seen siblings laid low and the warrior of the pantheon be shattered in pieces. They ran because the battle had been lost since the beginning. No pantheon could resist the unadulterated attention of a Chaos God claiming its paradoxical existence all the while being older than the dawn of time. In the material world billions had perished in abject agony and hundreds of worlds were now the playthings of the Eidolons. But that was not the worst, no far from it.
The worst thing was it had been allowed, it had been understood albeit dimly. People had perceived the burgeoning intelligence and the paradox of its birth. Some had fled it, some had even escaped for the moment but others. Others had hastened it. Others had prepared it. Others had destroyed what safeguards existed to prevent such an abomination. Now of course the result was not what the conspirators had wanted. They had wanted to become gods of their own right with planets to toy with at their leisure. They had learned too late that very few mortals beings had what it took to become gods, and even less to become Eidolons. Even the Eldar, strong as they were in the matters of the soul, couldn’t bear the full power of Want expressed through their essence. It had consumed most of them and many had joined their new goddess, as blind and idiot as she was.
They had turned Kurnous who had been desire into the relentless hunter on her steps. They had led the wave of destruction who forced the gods to abandon their heavens and let them return to the Empyrean. They forced her, their mother, to run to the verdant forests of Nurgle seeking an asylum against the storm. Isha cried no tears for the authors of that tragedy, only on what they had done and what they forced her to do to ensure her children survived their own mistakes. Even then she would not have done that if Morai-Heg and Lileath both had not assured her contingencies had been put in places and should the Eldar survive there would be a chance for revenge.
Her pursuers grew near but around her the Warp was moving as the Eidolons of Nurgle, knowing her intent marshalled against their younger siblings. She was now in a glade of rotten trees and ready for what could come. Long the power of the realm had called to her, even when she was chained with fire in the dungeons of Khaine and always she had denied him. Still she had no choice. She couldn’t run to the Lord of Skulls for in doing so she would infect her children with rage who couldn’t be sated. She couldn’t run to the Changer of Ways either because it would bring unforeseen changes and she didn’t want her children to become wholly other than they were. So she came to the overwhelming life of Nurgle who is the patron of struggling against impossible odds.
She saw the Hunter coming for her, horned head and twisted hooves, mask of bestial rage and promises of defilement in his eyes. She saw what had become of her husband and love and cried for her children had no father anymore. She saw the pale flesh and the burning lust and she made her decision before he could reach her. She raised in the corrupt glade, resplendent in youth and life and declared her willingness to fight without hope and continue as is the way of all life. She opened herself to the realm and let its essence fill her aligning her to Nurgle and denying Slaanesh his prize. She heard the Hunter scream in frustration as the soil took her from him and she was taken by the majesty of the cycle and her coming rebirth.
Winter came to the glade, the trees heavy with snow but still green and she rose as a white lady with soiled robe and tears on her face. She took the power of an Eidolon with the grace of someone born to it, that she was as her purviews so closely aligned with the Lady of Decay and as first act she bent all her will to make a divine pronouncement to all her children.
“Endure. In enduring grow strong”
Power flew from her to each Eldar still alive even the denizens of the Dark City or those on the Crone Worlds. They would endure. They would mate. They would give birth. They would never give up or go smoothly into oblivion but would embrace determination. Thus, even if they were fated to die, they would last enough time for the plans of other gods to come to fruition and Slaanesh be defeated. At least they would bruise the Dark Prince and deny him for as long as they could. And that, Isha understood, was the whole point, even if the defiance was futile, even if final victory was unachievable.
Still she looked at her children in the world and cried for them tears becoming soulstones and falling through Nurgle’s domain to the Crone Worlds, even those only at the border of the Great Eye. They would come those of her children who would spite Slaanesh even in death, they would come and seize her tears and use them. And as she cried in the wintry glade the souls of those who had seen the Fall and fought against it knowing fully they couldn’t turn their society around. Those prophets and doomsayers who had stayed to the last on the core worlds to warn people. Those who had died in vain just before the catastrophe and whose souls were not lost. Those rose from the ground to attend her for as long as she remained in the great garden of Grandfather Nurgle.