"What is the meaning of this?"
A look of bewilderment appeared on Cegorach's face.
How should one put it? As the Laughing God, he had long realized that he had taken on a new boss.
And this new boss's leaps in logic were simply more absurd than those of a trickster god like himself.
During this time, the Laughing God had been striving to gather intelligence, observe his new boss's various behavioral patterns, and attempt to synchronize his own style with the other's tempo.
In a sense, this had brought him immense convenience, and Adam was very pleased with his tact.
The best example of this, of course, was how craftworld after craftworld of Aeldari had been persuaded by the Laughing God and his Harlequin troupes to cooperate with the Imperium of Man and agree to join Adam's plan, gradually laying down a mistrust built over ten thousand years.
Most of the credit for this indeed belonged to the Laughing God.
After all, wanting those paranoid Aeldari Farseers—each more calculating and cryptic than the last—to drop their guard without their racial deity endorsing and pulling strings behind the scenes would have been a pipe dream relying solely on Adam's straightforward, brute-force style.
Yet, even so, he still couldn't quite keep up with the current rhythm.
"—May I ask why?"
The Laughing God spoke out of instinct.
The smile remained on his masked face, but his tone betrayed a cautious, probing edge.
Before he could even finish his sentence, Cegorach immediately regretted it and cut himself off.
Through those long, endless ages, he had learned a vital lesson.
There were some questions you simply shouldn't ask too much about!
"My apologies, I should not have inquired."
He cleanly dropped the subject.
Still, the Laughing God pondered.
If he could truly rescue his tearful sister once and for all, it would indeed be a stroke of immense good fortune for the Aeldari.
The goddess named Isha, a highly exceptional presence among the Aeldari pantheon, had always been an outlier in Cegorach's memory.
Compared to the other Aeldari gods, she was remarkably anthropomorphic, perhaps even a bit of a saint.
During the Fall, when the Aeldari gods were devoured by Slaanesh—as those members of the once-glorious pantheon were swallowed one after another into the belly of the newly born Youngest Dame—only Isha had survived alongside the Laughing God, who had fled with legendary swiftness.
The reason wasn't that she was particularly good at fighting, but rather that Nurgle had intervened.
Grandfather Nurgle had snatched this prize right off Slaanesh's dinner plate, saving Isha from the worst possible fate.
Yet after being snatched away, Isha's destiny hadn't improved by much.
The Garden of Nurgle... well, those who knew, knew.
And those who didn't would understand everything after taking a single step inside.
That place was, in the most literal sense, a pure cesspool.
"Ah, look at my memory!"
Thinking up to this point, the Laughing God suddenly clapped his hands with exaggerated flair.
He casually pulled a book from the endless shelves of the Black Library with theatrical flourishes, then pretended to flip through its pages.
Adam stood to the side, staring deadpan at the harlequin's performance.
To tell the truth, he really wanted to urge him along.
'Are you done yet?'
Before Adam could open his mouth, however, the Laughing God let out an unhesitating shout: "Look at this!"
---
Within the Warp.
The Garden of Nurgle.
In this divine realm that bustled with life in a sickening manner, everything currently appeared sickly and faded, entirely devoid of its usual bizarre and rank vitality.
The rotting yet thriving forests now wilted like frostbitten plants.
The massive, towering mushrooms that had once dripped with mucus and pestilential juices now hung limply, their edges covered in withered yellow spots. The vines no longer wriggled or coiled, but hung flaccidly like dead snakes upon the ground, their bark cracked and leaking thick, black sap.
The rivers still flowed, but their current had slowed to a near standstill.
The stench of sweet, sickly rot that constantly hung in the air had also dimmed, for even the fungi responsible for generating the foul odor were drawing their last breaths.
The Nurglings, who usually frolicked with joyful laughter, now crouched listlessly by the edges of dried-up puddles.
Their little heads drooped. Some curled into green balls, while others poked at the cracked mud with short arms, utterly bewildered as to why Grandfather's garden had turned into such a state.
The entire garden looked as though it were enduring a severe illness that refused to heal.
As the master of this realm—the supreme entity in the Warp representing decay, stagnation, yet harboring twisted rebirth—Nurgle was facing a dire ordeal.
Although he was straining with all his might to restore his domain, the garden had suffered unprecedented destruction during the extraordinarily fierce rounds of the Great Game earlier.
The combined destruction wrought by the Reality Warper and the Cursed One left wounds that were clearly not so easily mended.
Even though Nurgle had stitched and patched those torn openings over and over, cracks that could not be repaired by conventional means still remained deep within the garden.
And inside the garden, in a hidden corner known to no one.
Isha, the Goddess of Life, slowly opened her eyes.
Somewhat bewildered and curious, she cast her gaze outward, but could see nothing.
Surrounding her was absolute pitch-blackness; an impossibly thick fog shrouded everything. That fog was a pure dark, so heavy it almost felt solid.
Isha knew why.
It was because Nurgle had hidden her in the safest place in the entire Garden—within the black mansion where the Grandfather himself resided.
This was the core of Nurgle's Garden, the sanctuary where the Grandfather kept his most precious treasures.
The room where Isha was hidden lay in the deepest depths of the mansion, dark almost like a void rift within the Warp, preventing even a goddess like her from sensing anything outside.
As for precise spatial coordinates, that was even more out of the question—the Warp had no stable spatial coordinates to begin with, and within Nurgle's Garden, even time was viscous and elusive to grasp.
Trying to pinpoint a deliberately hidden entity in such an environment was unimaginably difficult.
Isha let out a soft sigh.
Sorrow, pain, regret, and confusion—a mixture of emotions swirled within her heart.
Normally, Nurgle was exceptionally fond of Isha, this collection he had hard-won from Slaanesh's jaws.
Every time the Grandfather stirred that impossibly massive cauldron and poured a fresh wave of pestilence out into the galaxy, he would make Isha watch from the side.
And every time, while Nurgle wasn't paying attention, Isha would secretly sip the pestilential soup from the cauldron, using her authority to analyze the components of those toxins. Then, when no one was looking, she would fulfill her divine duty as the Goddess of Life, broadcasting the formulas for the cures into the Milky Way as well.
How many living beings Isha had saved through this method—whether Human, Aeldari, T'au, or countless other unnamed intelligent species—no one knew.
Most species in the galaxy owed her the title of Goddess of Life.
Now, however, she clearly no longer had that privilege.
Ever since a golden, godlike figure of humanity had broken into Nurgle's Garden, she had not stepped foot out of this mansion.
That invasion had left deep wounds across the garden, and the Grandfather's reaction had been fiercely intense.
He had hidden Isha away.
Now, Isha had been completely cut off from the outside world for a very long time.
What was happening across the galaxy? What kind of upheavals had erupted in the Great Game among Chaos? How were her Aeldari children faring at this moment?
She had no idea.
The only thing she could feel was the occasional deep, anxious muttering of Nurgle echoing from the depths of the garden—sounds that penetrated the black mansion's walls, muffled beyond the point of distinguishing words.
Only on rare occasions would she feel the entire mansion tremble slightly, as if something immense were stomping its feet outside in a rage.
Isha sighed softly once more, her voice swallowed before it could travel far in the darkness.
"Ah well, I might as well get a good sleep then."
She spoke to herself plainly, then closed her eyes.
Her beautiful form stretched out gracefully, lying down toward the dark, submerged floor.
'Hopefully, the next time I open my eyes, I'll see a different view,' she thought.
Her consciousness gradually sank into a warm, almost evasive shallow sleep.
Then, just as she closed her eyes to sleep, Isha vaguely heard a roar.
The roar sounded like distant thunder, piercing through the thick barrier of darkness wrapping around her within the black mansion.
It was a rage-filled roar from the Grandfather.
Nurgle was howling, consumed by furious wrath.
In Isha's perception, that roar whipped up turbulence in the Warp, causing the entire Garden of Nurgle to tremble. Upon the dark room's walls, fine cracks began to appear across the barriers composed of shadow, letting in wisps of murky green light along with an unprecedented sense of... fear?
Yes, Nurgle's fury was laced with fear.
Isha could even feel that the roar didn't just shake Nurgle's Garden; like shockwaves spreading outward through the Warp matter, it transmitted into deeper dimensions.
Accompanying this roar, Isha caught faint glimpses of the outside scene.
The entire forest of the garden had sprung to life in sheer terror.
Rotten trees pulled up their roots and scrambled about like frightened animals, their branches waving wildly.
The Nurglings had gone completely wild, fleeing frantically in all directions, crashing into one another, and letting out squeals of terror in the dry mud.
They didn't understand.
They didn't understand why their Grandfather—who was usually all smiles and so kind and gentle to all his children—would suddenly erupt in such terrifying rage.
'What on earth happened?'
Isha opened her eyes in confusion.
"Huh?"
As the noble Goddess of Life, a prominent member of the Aeldari pantheon, and the pride and symbol of the Ancient Aeldari's most brilliant era, Isha let out an exclamation so bewildered she couldn't believe it came from herself.
Her voice was filled with utter confusion, even bordering on a bit silly.
Right now, her surroundings had completely transformed.
It was no longer that pitch-black room.
No.
In fact, she shouldn't even be in the Warp anymore.
Isha looked around. Her eyes, which had been asleep for so long they were somewhat dazed, reflected a sight that left her completely frozen.
A silent, solemn Black Library. Endless corridors stretched out in all directions, with vast numbers of wraithbone creations filling her entire vision. Those ancient bookshelves made of spirit stones and inscribed with runes radiated a deep mystery under a steady, faint glow.
The Black Library.
The last and most secret sanctuary of the Aeldari.
Isha, the Goddess of Life, finally reacted.
Her lips parted slightly, and it took a long moment before she squeezed out a sentence: "How is this possible?!"
An unbelievable cry echoed through the quiet corridors.
Immediately after, she raised her head, following a familiar aura—and spotted a face she recognized.
Cegorach, the Laughing God, was staring at her with a completely broken expression.
On that face, painted over with a theatrical mask, every exaggerated expression had frozen solid.
His entire divine body seemed fixed in place, presenting a ridiculous posture almost akin to performance art.
"How is this possible?!"
Cegorach shouted the exact same phrase.
Within these few brief seconds, the Laughing God had employed thousands of methods available to him as an Aeldari deity, ultimately forced to accept a fact that nearly crashed his brain.
This was indeed Isha herself.
The Laughing God instantly tore his shocked gaze away from the suddenly manifested goddess and cast it in terror toward the Reality Warper standing on the other side.
He was terrified, of course—or rather, he had no choice but to be terrified!
Was there a slight chance that he actually had zero capability to know where Isha, the Goddess of Life, was located within the Warp's Chaos domains?
He was just a little trickster god; how could he possibly be so omnipotent?
Anyone using basic logic would know: how could a treasure hidden with all the power of a Chaos God be something a minor racial god like him could discover?
Wasn't that a joke?
Yet, how did you use the fake intelligence I randomly pulled out less than a minute ago to rescue Isha directly out of the Garden?!
This wasn't scientific, and it certainly wasn't psychic!
This defied all logic!
"How did you do that?"
Cegorach's tone lacked any of the composure expected of the Laughing God; his voice was laced with a sheer, unadulterated shock that had completely shattered his cognitive defense line.
"Is that even a question?"
Adam shrugged.
Completely oblivious to Cegorach's little trick just now, he was still inwardly sighing.
'This guy's composure is really lacking.'
'We've worked together so many times, and you've seen my reality-warping ability more than once. Why make such a big fuss over nothing?'
"I reckoned it would work, so it worked. Didn't I tell you already?"
He casually waved his hand to dismiss the subject, then turned his gaze toward the other figure—the Goddess of Life lying on the ground, looking completely bewildered.
"My lady, I know you are feeling a bit confused right now."
"That's fine. You can catch up with your brother in a moment. But first, I need to borrow something from you. It will only take a moment."