“We are in agreement, then?” I finalized, and the brightly colored clown before me gave a deep bow with an air of somberness that was at odds with his wide-grinning mask.

“We are your humble servants,” the Harlequin intoned.

I turned to Lelith. “Can I leave the onboarding process to you and your friends?”

The eldar redhead, the first of the so-called ‘Nexus Eldar’, nodded in return. “It will be done, Sev.”

“Good. We can organize a reunion between Isha and Cegorach later, but for now, as agreed, the priority is to strengthen the Webway network between Commorragh and the Black Library.”

Both space elves nodded in agreement, and that was the end of that meeting.

Through my other incarnation on another world, I saw Isha nod as well with a broad, relieved smile before she returned to terraforming a desolate, radiation-blasted world.

I’m not sure if getting Cegorach to pledge his allegiance to me so easily was a good thing or not. The Laughing God of the eldar race had initially kept silent over the past few years, but now his Harlequin followers just pranced up to seek vassalage, offering full access to the storied Black Library and the lesser known paths of the Webway in exchange for protection.

Just like that.

Isha wasn’t that naive to expect that he was just happy to reunite with another member of the pantheon. “Cegorach probably understands his options are limited as your presence in the Webway grows. For all his grinning and laughter, he is a survivor,” she opined, “he alone successfully fled from the maw of Excess.”

I could sort of understand that. He’s a trickster god with a penchant for stupid practical jokes, so he probably knew how to get out of the trouble he created. Considering their similarities, I’d bet that there’s probably a story or ten about Cegorach pissing off another eldar deity, like Loki. I’ll have to remember to ask Isha later, it might make for useful blackmail…

Just to be safe, I made sure the clowns understood that the whole agreement hinged on their good behaviour; no ‘practical jokes’ on the Nexus or its citizens that saw people harmed or disappeared, and no stupid, convoluted theatrical plots that’d drag the Nexus into unnecessary shit. I can’t stop the clowns from clowning, but at least I can keep them from doing so in my direction.

I absently watched as the clowns trotted out of the meeting room before turning my attention to Lelith. “Since you’re here, any issues of note?”

She responded with a bow of her head. “Nothing that you need worry about, Sev. There have been some…contention over conversion, but it has thus far remained just that. Converts to the Sevari cause are growing steadily.”

“Do you have to use that word,” I said as I flinched, but the redhead only grinned.

“It is not an unkind term.”

“But it sounds…cringey.”

Lelith shrugged. “There are worse names.”

“I’m sure there are.” With how melodramatic the space elves can be, I believe that. “Anyway, besides conversions, anything else? No complaints about the tech?”

This time the Eldar shook her head. “Nobody is stupid enough to be displeased with the improvements the Nexus has provided. The seers have eagerly adopted Tiberium crystals in their wardings against the Empyrean, and after the successful trials, more ships are being embedded with the green crystal to allow for navigation into infested sections of the Webway.”

Dark amusement then crept up Lelith’s face. “The more rural kin…the Exodites, have been quietly unnerved by the relocations, but they are adapting.” She paused for a second to allow her grin to grow. “Supposedly, the World Spirits are being exasperatingly curious about their neighbors.”

Huh, I honestly expected more flack from that department. Using the same ancient tech the Commorrites fielded to transplant whole suns into the Webway or other more preferable sites, I began the move of Exodite worlds to populate the systems within the Nexus’ boundaries. It required a team of human and eldar experts in macro astrodynamics to ensure that the semi-sentient worlds maintained a stable orbit instead of crashing into the sun, and Isha made an appearance as well every now and then to soothe confused World Spirits.

So far we had six systems hosting Exodite worlds, all of which have at least two worlds sharing the same orbit. Some Exodite worlds were hotter or colder than usual, so there were systems with three orbits’ worth of inhabited worlds. 

I could imagine that suddenly having neighbours right next door to you (relatively speaking) might be quite an experience for the isolated self-exiles. But…

“Exasperating?”

Lelith shrugged. “World Spirits are apparently chatty amongst themselves.”

That’s a thing? 

“Are the Exodite worlds capable of conversation?” the me accompanying Isha asked. “Like gossip, chit-chat, and such.”

The smol goddess frowned adorably in thought for a moment, before shrugging. “They are the gestalt consciousness of Eldar souls, and are capable of a limited, primal degree of sentience. I suppose…it is possible for a more sapient form of communication to form, if the gestalt worldmind is harmonized in intent. Why do you ask, Sev?”

I rolled my eyes. “Supposedly, they’re talking among themselves?”

My incarnation back in Commorragh double checked with Lelith. “They’re talking among themselves?”

“Through the seers,” she clarified dryly.

“Through the seers,” I repeated to Isha.

The goddess stared at me for a moment, and then blinked. “I…see.” I guess she’s just as surprised at me at the idea of living worlds having social needs, which is fair enough I suppose.

“Do you want me to look into it?”

Isha pondered the question for a moment before shaking her head again. “I’ll attend to the matter first. I have to admit, I overlooked the fact that living worlds potentially require social enrichment… The garden worlds molded were often the pearls of their systems, and the exiled kin seeded remote worlds, so that…consideration was overlooked.”

“Wanna deal with it now?”

Isha looked around at the glade she was working on. “It is not a pressing matter?”

“Lelith’s not marking it as urgent.”

“Then…I think I should finish my work here first, at the very least.”

I nodded with the wholeheartedness of someone uninvolved. “Sure.”

At the same time, my incarnation back in Commorragh gave Lelith a nod. “Isha will see to it later. In the meantime, prepare for the introduction of the Laughing God’s people to the ranks. See if any Craftworlders might know what better to expect.”

“By your will, Sev.”

I left Lelith in the office and focused my awareness to another self currently at the very edge of Commorragh. The physical transition point between the port megacity and the rest of the Webway was a massive, mind-straining horizontal chasm that revealed ghost lights and dancing shadows on the other end. I think Eva approximated that the entirety of the Imperium’s crusade fleet we first encountered - primarchs and Emperor and all - would barely cover a quarter of the entrance if you stacked them from bow to stern.

It was big enough that my Apocalypse titans were used to raze the winding and heavily entrenched network of defenses, instead of leaving it to the Sentinel swarms. And this was just one of four major arteries that junctioned in Commorragh, which no doubt contributed to this Webway city’s importance and influence.

Now new defense systems were being built around the massive liminal spaces; Console-strengthened steel plates were welded together into bunkers to house the same weapon arrays that filled my star forts, and the latest iteration of sensor arrays would give those weapons targets well before they got too close. Tiberium mesh sandwiched between the layers to provide protection from the metanatural, while depots, teleport beacons, and portals connected the defenses to the greater logistics grid.

Later down the line, I might anchor a star fort in the middle of each entrance to serve as a proper checkpoint, an unignorable obstacle, and a regional command center.

That’s for later. For now though, insane as it might be, I’m actually stretching my Sentinels thin. Even back when the Nexus was limited to just Earth, it still took more than a couple of months for three billion robots just to clean up the ruins that sprawled throughout rad-washed China. Three billion bots still took weeks to fully empty out the maze of tunnels, bunkers and strongpoints that made up the Himalayan Cloud Forts.

Now, I’ve got more than three trillion Sentinels, but with the defenses, shipbuilding, and other macro projects queued up, I could wish for a quadrillion and it might still not be enough. At least Isha’s around to help with terraforming, and the Eldar’s stellar knowledge means I don’t have to waste time and resources in expanding the sensor grid on Mars.

If I was focused on the grand goal of uniting Humanity, I could imagine myself being tempted to cut a lot of corners to focus on expansion, like a certain emperor of a certain Imperium might do.

But I’m not the Emprah, and my Nexus will move along as it always has ever since I set up shop with Piper and Nat: Stabilize first, then expand. 

And right now there’s a lot of stabilizing to be done.

I felt rather than heard the thrum of a grav vehicle coming to a stop behind me, and turned to greet my next appointment. 

“Eldrad.”

The farseer gave a shallow but deferential bow, his helmet in his arm. “Lord Sev. Primarch Magnus has agreed to the new terms.”

“That’s good to hear. Did it take much convincing?”

The corners of Eldrad’s lips twitched. “Negotiations went far smoother than we anticipated. The doubts among the primarchs might run far deeper than we thought.”

“Angron and Magnus are still outliers,” I replied, frowning a little.

“And Konrad? And Sanguinius?”

I stopped an impulsive retort and stared at the farseer. “Sanguinius?”

This time there was no mistaking the smugness leaking out of the space elf. “Farseer Alladrios has reported of Konrad reaching out to his brother, and the results are as dictated by the strands of fate.”

I held back my disdain for the whole ‘skeins of fate’ schtick of the Eldar. Thanks to the console opening my senses to a different and far more terrifying eldritch plane than the Warp, I was leery of trying to read the future. And after the incident with the Rasputin/Yog-Sothoth revenant, I found that time was far too malleable to trust any sort of divination. 

And the Warp, if I remember rightly, is supposed to be chronologically unstable at times, so it might not even require interference from a different cosmic plane of power to snap reality onto a completely different set of tracks, leaving webs of fate and visions of the future behind.

Hopefully, if or when the time comes, the Eldar learning that fact would not cause as much collateral damage as they tend to suffer whenever things don’t go as planned. 

Hm…maybe I should give some of the farseers a glimpse at Yog? Now that’s a side project that doesn’t need Sentinels…

But still…turning Sanguinius is impressive…assuming that it actually comes to pass, anyway. Gotta remember not to be too impressed yet until the results actually come in.

Just barely remembering that I still was holding an audience, I gave Eldrad a curt nod. “And how many possibilities do you expect from this?”

He replied too smoothly for my taste. “There will be no results that will bring harm to the Nexus Unity, I can assure you.”

“Forgive me for being skeptical.” Eldrad kept silent for a second before I sighed. 

“But since we’re going down this route… I want a list of the worst case scenarios first. This is the one where he might end up stabbing Lorgar, or the other way around, right?”

Do I want to save golden hawk boi if worse comes to worst, or do I just prepare the planet-cracking toys?

“Of course, Lord Sev,” the farseer answered, and bowed again.

“Pass the list to Piper or Cait. Lelith’s busy, so don’t bother her.”

He sounded another affirmative, and I shook off my irritation of having to deal with more potential bullshit while I’m still settling down.

Returning to the original reason of summoning Eldrad over, I glanced out to the vast gloom of the open Webway. “So, you and your seers have said that this was the straightest path to Terra, right? Do you know how clear the path is? How much of the Webway will we have to rebuild and repair?”