This was a disaster.
There was no other way to describe it.
The Aeldari Empire, whose native inhabitant's body I had been occupying for the past week, wasn't merely in decline. No, it was racing toward oblivion, unraveling hundreds of thousands of times faster than the Aztec Empire ever had back on Earth, known in this universe as Holy Terra.
Yes, that Terra.
The same world where, at this very moment, an Alpha Plus psyker calling himself the Emperor was gathering strength in the Himalayan Mountains, laying the groundwork for the future unification of humanity's cradle world.
You can probably guess where I'd ended up, can't you?
"I always used to say that if I ever got transmigrated somewhere terrible, at least it wouldn't be Warhammer. Apparently luck disagreed. What am I, cursed or something?"
A heavy sigh escaped me, carrying every ounce of frustration I felt toward my current circumstances.
"Right..."
I ran a hand through my new head of fiery red Aeldari hair. Then again, now that I thought about it, red seemed to be a surprisingly common color among my new race.
So yes.
I'd ended up in bloody Warhammer.
May the Tyranids, Chaos worshippers, Necrons, Orks, Drukhari, T'au, and every future Imperial agent of the Ordo Xenos take me.
The list of things capable of ruining a transmigrated Aeldari's day was already becoming embarrassingly long, and this wasn't merely Warhammer.
This was that Warhammer.
The one where the Aeldari Empire was charging headfirst toward Hell itself.
Or, in local terminology, the Warp.
The same Warp where three Chaos Gods already lurked beyond reality's veil. The Schemer, the Butcher, and the Rotting One.
Meanwhile, the Aeldari, former servants of the Old Ones and once the undisputed masters of the galaxy, had thrown themselves into every imaginable form of excess. Every vice, every pleasure, every indulgence was embraced with open arms, encouraged at every turn by the priests of countless Cults of Pleasure.
People strutted through the streets dressed in outfits that looked as though they had been copied directly from Slaanesh's future followers. People who, as they might say on Holy Terra during the Second Millennium, had started worshipping She Who Thirsts long before it became fashionable in the Forty-First.
To truly understand the state of my new long-eared brethren, one fact had to be emphasized.
Nobody worked anymore.
Nobody.
Not a single soul.
The Empire's governmental apparatus barely functioned, held together by little more than duct tape and prayer. Granted, the duct tape happened to be impossibly advanced automated systems powered by psychic artificial intelligences and technologies so sophisticated they bordered on magic.
Even those systems had limits. Even if Slaanesh never came into existence, the Empire's government would eventually collapse beneath its own weight.
The former servants of the Old Ones simply didn't care.
About anything.
They indulged. Then they indulged some more. And when that stopped being enough, they discovered entirely new ways to indulge again.
They drowned themselves in narcotics crafted by the most advanced scientific civilization in the galaxy. They chased pleasures so extreme and depraved that even Commorragh might have looked at them and felt uncomfortable. Throughout it all, priests draped in gold, purple, and emerald robes wandered from world to world in absurd numbers, enthusiastically encouraging the decline.
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For the past several days, I'd been forced to operate like some kind of stealth agent whenever I left home. Every time I encountered one of those priests, I had to pretend to be a completely burned-out idiot who barely remembered his own name, all so the Cults of Pleasure wouldn't constantly corner me with their fascinating drug-fueled propositions.
Or at least not any more often than usual.
Not that I had any interest in joining an orgy at the moment.
Though I certainly wasn't going to complain about Aeldari women.
Beautiful was beautiful.
There was no arguing with that.
Of course, the future Ordo Xenos would probably classify such thoughts as heresy.
Resounding heresy.
Fortunately, the Imperium of Man didn't exist yet.
And I wasn't human anymore.
Still...
If I really thought about it...
Would humanity have done any better in the Aeldari's place?
Would humans have remained virtuous after millions of years of life? After mastering science, technology, and every conceivable need? After inventing everything there was to invent? After automation and artificial intelligence had rendered labor obsolete? After every hour of every day belonged entirely to them?
No.
Of course not.
Humans wouldn't have been any better.
Another sigh escaped me.
As for my new body, there hadn't even been a struggle between minds. By all rights, the original owner's three centuries of memories should have swallowed my twenty-five years of human experience without even noticing the difference.
Instead, from a psychic perspective, our souls had merged.
Rather than consuming mine, the Aeldari soul had simply absorbed it and handed me the reins.
Why?
Because its owner had long since ceased to care.
Centuries of decadence and powerful narcotics had eroded his ambition, his initiative, and eventually his will itself. As a result, my personality remained largely intact. The original Aeldari disappeared entirely, leaving behind only bodily instincts, reflexes, and the innate understanding that I was now Aeldari rather than human.
Even his memories came in fragments, like scenes clipped from an immersive film. Not that there was much worth watching. Just endless decadence in keeping with the modern Aeldari Empire, and levels of debauchery that made even the most outrageous Japanese hentai look downright wholesome by comparison.
I wasn't exactly prudish.
I'd seen plenty over the years.
Yet some of those memories still managed to make me blush.
Emperor preserve me.
Pure degeneracy.
And I definitely did not approve.
That said, I had no intention of fleeing aboard one of the Craftworlds, either. They had chosen the Path, a life of emotional restraint and rigid discipline. That wasn't for me.
Becoming some local version of a Jedi?
No thanks.
I needed another option, and fortunately one presented itself only moments later. It was simple. Obvious, even.
Taking advantage of the government's complete dysfunction and the unquestioning obedience every psychic intelligence showed toward any Aeldari citizen, I decided to do what any sensible person would do.
Ignore the rest of my species entirely.
Employ the ancient hundred-and-first karate technique.
Run away.
More specifically, run into the Webway.
It was the one place where neither Slaanesh nor the Warp held much influence, inhabited by people who feared neither. People who probably feared nothing at all. People who viewed the grim darkness of the far future as one colossal cosmic joke.
The Harlequins.
Aeldari lived for an extraordinarily long time, especially now, before the Fall, when the Empire still possessed the technological inheritance of the Old Ones, the greatest civilization this galaxy had ever known. If I played my cards right, I could survive all the way into the Forty-Second Millennium.
Old age wasn't my concern.
Violent death was.
To avoid that fate, I needed skills.
Real skills.
And I needed a patron powerful enough that even the horrors of the future would think twice before touching me.
Without both, surviving in the grim darkness of the far future was nearly impossible, no matter what anyone claimed about free will or self-determination. Not in a galaxy where Tzeentch existed. The very idea was laughable.
Which brought me back to my plan.
Who better than the Laughing God himself?
The Chaos Gods?
Ridiculous.
The Emperor?
Absolutely not.
Even if I were still human, I wouldn't be brave, or foolish, enough to seek him out.
Other so-called gods?
Most of them were destined to die.
I liked living.
Most of the Aeldari pantheon would eventually end up inside the maw of She Who Thirsts.
But Cegorach?
Cegorach escaped.
More importantly, by the standards of this universe, he was practically spotless. He wasn't perfect, but compared to every other godly power available, he was as close as anyone could reasonably hope to find.
So the decision practically made itself.
Take everything I could carry and get the hell out of this civilization-wide march toward oblivion.