"I know this wasn't how you wanted it to end, but this is how it's going to be."

Smoke was rising from the iron statue in front of Ynnead, a deep red glow emanating from deep inside the empty iron sockets. From the very core of the craftworld, a muffled roar seemed to resonate through the entire structure. Like a struck bell the voice of the war god raged at the young woman standing in front of his avatar. Ynnead glared at the statue in front of her and slowly reached down and picked something up from the ground. With steady hands, she placed the phoenix crown upon her own brow.

"Of all of my siblings, I knew you would be the one who would never understand. But know this, for as long as I wear this crown, there will be no crusade, no final epic struggle, no sororicide. I will not lead the Eldar against her or anyone else for that matter. I intend to lead them towards extinction. And as they dwindle, so will she. In the end, she will die, and so will you and I. Soon enough, we will all be gone. She can't do anything to stop that now, so I let her go."

The chamber shook and the statue in front of Ynnead started to smoulder. In response, her eyes begin to glitter and from nowhere a dark wind began to howl.

"Yeah, well, there is even less you can do about it. I am your queen, the last phoenix queen, and like her, one way or the other, you will heed my will!"

The air next to the statue shimmered and a slender man dressed in a long scintillating cape and wearing a mask placed a hand on the gigantic statue of the war god. The glow seemed to dim, ever so slightly.

"It's no use brother. Believe me, I tried. We all did. Take in her scent and have a taste. Don't you feel something familiar?"

If the empty sockets of a silent iron statue could widen in shock, that is what they did.

"Yes, brother. That is Isha. Was Isha. She also tried, and that is what happened to her."

Ynnead opened her mouth to protest but the Laughing God silenced her with an almost indistinguishable shake of his head. Gently, he caressed the iron statue with his slender fingers, like a mother soothing a crying child.

"It's over. It's not the way we thought it would end, but it's over. Sleep now, brother. Leave it to me, I promise I won't let your struggle be in vain."

Ever so slowly the statue dimmed and became still. At last, Ynnead let out a sigh of relief, as if she had been holding her breath the entire confrontation. Mask smiling, the Laughing God picked up the avatar's huge iron sword standing next to the throne, heaving it over his shoulder. This was the Wailing Doom, the weapon of the god of war.

"I'll hold on to this for now, just in case. One can never be too careful."

"How did you do that? I was sure he would fight me with everything he got." Ynnead stared in disbelief at her two remaining brothers.

"Tricks of the trade, my dear queen," the slender man bowed, balancing the giant sword in the palm of his hand. "He respects power above all else, and as you've noted on so many times, power is but an illusion. And I excel at illusions."

"And to be honest, I expected you to fight me as well," Ynnead responded, looking down. "After what happened."

"You wound me, my queen. I'm a lover, not a fighter!"

Ynnead raised a single eyebrow in response.

The Laughing God shrugged his shoulders. "Fine then, but I am a pragmatic man, one who likes to come out on top. You're holding all the cards, my dear queen. If she can bend the knee, I guess so can I."

"Even if it means your death?"

"We all die sooner or later, don't we? At least this way I get to go out in style. A royal jester, I can live with that."

Not responding, the young queen still looked down and the floor, shuffling her feet, hands clenching and unclenching. The Laughing God danced past her, patting her on the shoulder as he passed.

"Now, come, we have a million things to do. We need to get word to the other craftworlds, patch things up with the humans, and get the hell out of here. And on top of that-"

"It was you, wasn't it?"

For a split second, The Laughing God stopped dead in his tracks at the ice-cold tone of his queen's voice. Then he whirled around thematically, striking a comically clueless pose.

"I was what, my dear queen?"

"It was you who told her where to find me. That night with my parents."

The silence in the room was so compact that you could almost touch it. It was only interrupted by the sound of tears dripping from Ynnead's chin onto the floor. Drip drip drip.

"You told her where to find me when I was the most vulnerable. I trusted you with my most precious secret and you stabbed me in the back and sold me out. You, who was the first to find me, whom I love the most."

Ynnnead's hands were trembling, blood dripping between her fingers as her nails dug into the palms of her hands. Drip drip drip.

"You were the one who ripped my parent's love away from me, not knowing that it was the one thing holding me together. So many lives, gone because of me. If Isha hadn't given her life to stop me, I would have exterminated everything."

"I-"

"Don't lie to me, not now. I need to know."

"It seems you already know the truth, my queen. The only question now is; what will you do with it?"

"It was you?"

"It was me."

"Why?" The young queen's voice was so fragile that a single puff of wind seems to be able to shatter it.

"You refused to hate her, refused to see her for what she was. I wanted to give you a reason, to show you the sister the rest of us knew."

"Why is hate so important to you?"

"Because it's all I have left."

"Don't you see now, how similar you all are? You're no better than she is, caught in this endless cycle, chasing each other's tails. It has to end, you understand that, don't you?"

"I do."

Ynnead took a deep breath, raising her bloody palms to her face. She smiled and a golden light coursed through her, closing the wounds and replacing them with scaly glittering skin. She raised her eyes up from the floor. Her small, quiet smile lit up the room in a carnival of light and shadow. With one last breath, she started to exhale the last of her pain.

"I forgive you, brother."

The Laughing God remained silent.

"I forgive you for betraying me, just as I forgave her. I will forgive you all and we will walk hand in hand towards a brighter future. Do you forgive me for what I've done to you?"

"I forgive you," echoed the Laughing God in response.

The last queen of the Eldar started to turn around, face beaming, eager to embrace her brother, but just as she was about to open her arms, she felt a sharp pain in her back.

Imisha had almost slumbered off, one son at each breast when Ikaria stormed into her quarters. Exhausted, she closed her eyes again, not even bothering to cover herself. Davar was snoring in the bed next to her, wrapped in bandages after the fleet battle that had raged over the planet. At long last, it was over and they could all rest.

"You have my daughter, right? Give her here, she must be starving," Imisha yawned, motion Ikaria closer and moving the greedy eldest son of her right breast.

"No, Imisha, I don't."

Upon hearing the tone of Ikaria's voice, Imisha opened her eyes.

"What do you mean, you don't?"

Only now could she see how concerned Ikaria was. And that she had her witch blade strapped to her back.

"No one has seen her. Or heard of her."

Imisha lazily rosed from the chair she had been slumbering in, handing her sons off to her half-awake husband and shuffled to her feet. In two seconds the three of them were snoring together. Men, Imisha mused.

"Could it have been some sort of mixup?" Ikaria continued anxiously. "Since all children were sheltered near the core for the battle, in the confusion..."

"Calm down, Ynnead would never trust my baby with a stranger. I thought she'd sent you in her place." The fact that she hadn't likely meant that Ynnead still had the child with her. In any case, it was beyond unlikely that the triumphant young god would let any harm come to her favourite little girl.

"I have yet to meet the queen," Ikaria mumbled, eyes downcast. To her, and the rest of the craftworld, Ynnead was now the fabled phoenix queen. To Imisha, she was still a spoiled pubescent brat. One who was likely teaching her only daughter mischief in some dark corner of the craftworld.

"Well let's go find her then, shall we? It's time for my little one to eat anyway."

The two of them stepped out into the corridor. Ikaria sent one last lightning-fast longing glance back at the sleeping children when she thought her old mentor wasn't looking. Imisha smiled to herself, then glanced back at Ikaria. At times she could already glimpse the seed of a new soul growing in the warp within the young warlock, waiting for a vessel to inhabit. Another little girl perhaps, scaled and feathered from tip to toe, someone her own daughter would grow up playing alongside.

"What?" Ikaria demanded as Imisha kept staring.

"Oh, nothing."

"I hate it when you do that."

Imisha just smiled back in response, as smugly and obnoxiously as she could. She wondered if Ikaria herself knew she was pregnant. Likely not. After all, Imisha hadn't. But most of all, she wondered who the lucky father was. Perhaps Ikaria didn't even know herself. The post-battle feast had been something not seen in thousands of years; A whole craftworld, egged on by Ynnead's protective presence, allowed to celebrate without restriction. Like stars on a clear evening sky, many new souls had ignited on that day.

"And couldn't you have put on something more...formal?" The young warlock continued, cautiously, with as much respect as she could muster.

"Dressing in bedrobes is a serious religious tradition for high priests of Ynnead, my young warlock," Imisha answered gravely, stretching her arms above her head in an attempt to shake the sleepiness from her limbs.

"It is?"

"Well, if it isn't, I'm making it one." When Ikaria didn't answer, Imisha continued. "You might as well get used to the lack of formality; Ynnead doesn't wear anything, now that she's grown a bit. Oh, and I should warn you, she can get a bit curious at times, so don't be surprised if she cops a feel. Actually, given your figure, I'm pretty sure she will. Sexual harassment seems to be her way of saying hello, the little pervert."

Ikaria scowled and crossed her arms protectively over her chest. Bit by bit she was starting to realize that the new Eldar deity wasn't quite what she had expected. Lost in her own thoughts she didn't notice that Imisha had stopped.

"Hey, Ika, have you noticed?"

Ikaria shook her head, wondering what cryptic riddle her mentor had for her this time.

"Listen," Imisha mused.

"I can't hear anything," Ikaria answered.

"Exactly. Where is everyone?"

They had indeed been walking through empty corridors since they left Imisha's quarters. Ikaria closed her eyes and frowned. This close to the core the constant hum of the infinite circuit made it all but impossible to grasp the warp shadows of the Eldar inhabiting the craftworld.

"Did everyone leave while I was sleeping or something?" Imisha mused.

"We had a mass migration of harlequins yesterday, but apart from that everyone should be here."

"What?"

"Yeah, all of a sudden, right after the queen arrived, all the harlequins troupes wanted to leave, all at once. I didn't think much of it, trying to make sense of the dancers is a lost cause." With a psychic nod, Ikaria opened a communication channel to the control centre.

"Craftworld control, please respond."

Silence.

"Craftworld control, this is Ikaria. Please respond."

More silence.

"Craftworld control, I know that last night was a one of a kind occurrence and that a lot of you probably have sore heads but if you don't pick up, so help me I'm going to come up there personally and-"

"Ika."

The young warlock looked up and saw here mentor crouching in a bend of the corridor up ahead. When she turned the corner she gasped. Imisha was crouching by the body of young Eldar man.

"Dead," Imisha said in an emotionless voice.

"Craftworld control, I swear to Isha, this is an emergency-" But Imisha put a hand on her young pupil, shaking her head with eyes devoid of sentiment. Ikaria bent down, examining the dead man. She could see no physical wounds or any signs of distress. Even the heavy tools the man had been carrying were lying right next by his corpse.

"This doesn't make sense," Ikaria started, "It's like he just laid down and died. What daemon could have done this?"

Imisha didn't respond, instead, she started to walk forward, as if in a trance. The pair of them continued down the hallway. Soon droves of bodies lined the hallways on both sides. Men, women and children, all dead as if they had just suddenly decided to stop breathing. Finally, they arrived at the emergency nursery chamber, located right at the craftworld's core, where the majority of the children had been housed during the battle. With a mental nod, Ikaria opened the door.

The insides were like a field full of budding flowers, all scythed down in one fell swoop. No wind swept across their petals anymore, no sun would ever again shine upon their leaves, their fragile roots all pulled up from the ground.

Without a word, Imisha turned around and started walking away.

"Imisha!" Ikaria shouted, still standing in the doorway to the nursery. The former farseer turned around, her face like a blank slate of paper.

"We have to...we..." Ikaria couldn't breathe. She couldn't stand to look into the room, the sight made her feel ill, her head was spinning. She fell to her knees and vomited all over her dress. Quickly she dried the bile away and croaked at her companion. "We have to do something!"

"There is nothing we can do," Imisha responded, turning around once again and continued striding away down the hallway, down towards the craftworld's core.

"Imisha! Stop! Wait!" Ikaria stumbled after her mentor, trying to keep the bile from rising again. Her eyes wouldn't focus and her feet felt like lead. Every breath was a struggle. The corridors seemed to go on forever like they were traversing a maze in a long-forgotten tomb. Ikaria kept screaming at Imisha, begging her to stop, but the farseer had stopped responding. Only outside the massive iron doors leading to the craftworld's core did Ikaria finally catch up to her.

"Imisha, you have to," Ikaria almost choked on the words, it was so hard to breathe. "You have to come to your senses, think about, think about..." She started to panic, gasping for air and grasping at Imisha robes. Darkness was descending before her eyes. "Think...think...about your...your...children."

"My children are already dead," declared Imisha as Ikaria's cold fingers clawed at her robe. Finally, the warlock's desperate eyes rolled over and she stopped breathing, still clutching Imisha's clothes. Imisha shook the robe loose and with a flick of her will swung the gigantic iron doors wide open. Stark naked, she walked through the door into the innermost sanctum of the craftworld.

There within, nailed to the war god's iron throne, did she find her master. The young god's slender body was riddled with stab wounds, as if the sword she was impaled on had been thrust into her body over and over again a great number of times. Her figure was beaten, almost beyond recognition, limbs hanging in odd angles, toes and fingers broken, a flower trampled into the ground. She hung there listlessly now, the Wailing Doom thrust right between her breasts and into the iron throne beyond. Blood was splattered all over the room, but mostly pooling below the young god. Imisha strode forwards and with a shaking hand touched the feet of her master. As Ynnead opened her teary eyes and sobbed through cracked lips, Imisha stroked her mangled foot. Finally, her stony face started to crack and she wept alongside her broken god.

"I'm sorry Imisha. I tried to hold it back, but I can't. I'm dying. I'm so sorry."

"I know."

Originating from the young god, unseen to all but Imisha, tentacles of black smoke were racing in all directions, ripping the life from everything, dragging it down alongside the death god. Imisha had seen them right from the start, feeding upon the people in the corridor, the children in the nursery and finally on Ikaria. Even now, they were stalking her as well, despite her link to her master. Imisha might die last, but she would die.

"It won't be much longer now. I guess this is the end," Ynnead sobbed. "I didn't want it to end like this, I thought, I thought I could leave this place a little brighter than it was when I came. But in the end, all I'm good for is killing. Oh Imisha, the children, I ate the children. I didn't want to, I didn't. I don't want everything to die, I don't want to leave the galaxy cold and void," she wailed.

"Then she has a suggestion for you," came a voice from the other side of the room.

Imisha looked up, at first not recognizing the harlequin solitaire she had encountered before. She was wearing a long white bridal veil, the same that Ynnead had worn when they had first met. Ynnead's black tentacles seemed to avoid it, and almost bounced off it when they came close.

"Greetings seer," The solitaire curtsied. "We meet again."

"You," Imisha hissed back. "You did this. You and your kind. Why?"

"Some can't stand the thought of living in a galaxy where she can be forgiven for what she has done to us. The death goddess deserves her fate."

"What could she possibly have done to deserve this?"

"She forgave her sister. Forgave that which could not be forgiven, that which must never be forgiven, that which she had no right to forgive. And so, in return, she can not be forgiven. She is now our enemy, like her sister. A traitor to all her kind." The solitaire's voice was dripping with hatred.

"Are you telling me that you rather murder the whole galaxy than make peace?"

"If the death goddess so chooses."

"You think Ynnead wanted this? You did this to her, knowing full well what will happen if she dies."

"She's saying the death goddess does not have to die."

Ynnead looked up for the first time, bloody and teary eyes following at the harlequin as she strode closer to the throne.

"You recognize this, do you not, death goddess?" The solitaire queried, rubbing the veil between her fingers. "It is Isha's bridal veil, which she wore to her wedding bed when she and her husband created us all. It's the one thing known to be able to contain you."

"This is your choice, death goddess. Either die and take the galaxy with you or wrap yourself in this and sink deep down into the deepest depths of the infinite circuit. Down there, you will let the wraithbone envelope you and trap you in stasis. Then you must lie still, for all eternity, alongside the dead, contemplating the sins you have committed against our people. My people will push this empty husk into the Eye of Terror. It will be as if you never existed. That is to be your punishment."

"Are you insane? You think you can just kill us all and sweep her under the rug? There is no way you will be able to keep this quiet," Imisha spat back.

"It is true that your name will be hard to silence, Ynnead of the dead. So her master will reshape the cult of the dead into a more manageable form. One that cares nothing for the sanctity of life and instead strives to regain the glory of old, driven by a fiery hatred for the great enemy. It might take time to weed out the traitorous elements, but without their master to lead them, she is confident we will succeed. Know this, these new Ynnari will be nothing like you. Your legacy dies here on this day."

"And you want her to be buried alive to cover up your crime?" Imisha demanded.

The solitaire's mask just smiled back. At first, Imisha had resisted the Ynnead's notion that the Eldar was beyond saving but now she recognized it for truth.

"I'll do it," Ynnead spoke quietly, blood now pouring from the corners of her mouth. She looked up at the solitaire. "But you do realize that the moment you take that veil off and pull this sword out of me, you'll be devoured and dragged down with me. You will share my fate."

"She knows." The solitaire strode up to the throne, climbed up and gripped the sword with both hands. The burning blade seared her hands and filled the room with the smell of burning flesh.

"No, Ynnead, I won't let you do this! There has to be some other way! You can't let them do this to you." Imisha closed her fist. She would be no match against the solitaire, but she would go down fighting. There was nothing to live for anymore anyway. Might as well let the galaxy burn. But before she could strike, the solitaire tore off her own mask and looked Imisha straight in the eyes. Imisha knew those eyes, she knew that face.

"Listen to her carefully, you will be with your sons and husband soon. They're waiting for you within your master."

"My sons? What do you..." Imisha's eyes went wide.

The solitaire turned back to Ynnead. "Are you ready, only daughter of my only son?"

"I'm ready," Ynnead nodded.

And so ends the tale of Ynnead, last queen of the Eldar, who naively considered all life to be sacred and dared to dream that she could bring a little hope and light into this ravaged galaxy.

Sadly, in the cold dark future of the 41st century, there can be no peace, no light, no hope.

Only war.

That's it! Prelude to the end was the first text I ever wrote and I'm really happy to have finished it, despite its many many flaws. Isha knows I never meant for it to be this long, yet at the same time, it still feels rushed. I cut a lot out, such as Ynnead's adventures within the black library and the backstory behind her birth. But in the end, I figured it was better to end it with what time I had than to leave it unfinished. For those of you who wonder, this ending was planned from the very start. It was always meant to be a tragedy.

Anyway, thank you to everyone for reading and an even bigger thanks to everyone who offered encouragement and feedback. I hope you've all enjoyed my little story. If you have yet to have your fill, as stated before, there will be two epilogues: One for Nurgle, and one for Inquisitor Amaron.