Tzeentch's Worry

The center of the ever-changing Crystal Labyrinth was where Tzeentch himself resided.

Realm of Eternal Change

Within this labyrinth, whose passages were generated at random every moment and accompanied by all manner of disintegration, division, collapse, and reconstruction, Tzeentch needed no guards or servants to protect him. Countless reckless fools would lose themselves in this domain forever. Even weak mortals who merely caught a glimpse of a tiny section of the Crystal Labyrinth's walls would be washed by endless reality and illusion until they went mad, then be corrupted into Tzeentch's lowliest servants.

At the very center of the crystal refractions, Tzeentch played his Great Game, one that would never reach its end.

Change! What wonderful change!

Endless change! Endless possibilities!

Change for the better! Change for the worse! As long as there was change, it was a good thing!

Amid change, Tzeentch manipulated the fates of countless living beings. Amid change, he set off the innumerable foreshadowings he had planted, then left new hidden moves in their wake.

There was never the slightest trace of any pattern in the long threads of fate watched by Tzeentch. Those threads danced and shifted without cease, intertwining and blending with other threads of fate to weave a vast, magnificent web whose scale defied description.

But just now, the web of fate had drawn together.

This change shocked Tzeentch and left him unable to understand. Even if Nurgle, the embodiment of eternal stagnation, personally took the field, he could not have condensed the threads of fate into so few.

The threads of fate themselves had not increased or decreased in the slightest, yet those long strands seemed to have received some signal. In an instant, they rearranged, intertwined, and tangled together, finally converging at a single point within the glittering infinite heights before continuing upward and unfolding into limitless possibilities.

No one understood better than Tzeentch what this phenomenon meant. An indisputable protagonist had appeared upon this dark and grand stage. From this moment onward, fate would take him as its center, stirring up limited change around him.

This frightened Tzeentch. The consequence of such a convergence of fate threads would greatly weaken his power, and the extent of that weakening was impossible to estimate. To go from infinitely many possible endings to only one—when that ending came to pass, Tzeentch would become so vulnerable that even mortals could slay him.

When that time came, the ending of the Great Game, written across countless eras, would be Tzeentch's defeat and the victory of the other gods.

"Such a future is unacceptable!" A voice mixed from countless tones and languages wove itself into a single sentence. The violent fluctuation made the entire Crystal Labyrinth tremble. Those lowly, foolish servants of Tzeentch could not understand why their great master was experiencing such intense emotional turmoil.

"But the ending has not yet been decided! It still lies amid endless, unobservable possibilities!"

As long as the threads of fate remained blurred and could not be observed by Tzeentch, fate's ending could not be determined. Tzeentch could only see the endings that were already destined within those threads, such as the extinction of the Aeldari.

Though Tzeentch could not see how events unfolded along that long road to extinction, the Aeldari's end was certain. Whenever he saw those Aeldari seers exhaust everything they had in pursuit of unreachable hope for their race, the eternal manipulator felt heartfelt delight. Futile struggle was Tzeentch's finest entertainment when toying with living beings.

"Who is calling upon my essence?" Tzeentch silently sensed the unusual summons. His champions and seers knew only a fraction of his great power; they had no understanding whatsoever of his essence. Even Magnus, whose soul Tzeentch controlled, knew only a little more than the other fools.

Perhaps this was the key to the convergence of fate threads: a completely new being that had never appeared before.

Tzeentch silently locked onto the location of that outrageously bold caller. It was, astonishingly, the vast decaying tomb where the physical body of his old enemy, the God-Emperor, rested—the so-called Holy Terra.

"Let me have a good look at you!" Tzeentch immediately cast his gaze upon that tiny planet. Passing through countless layers of human creations, he saw a young man dressed in clothing utterly out of place for this era, along with the eager gazes of the other three Chaos Gods.

"Such clothing means he is a transmigrator. Judging by his garments, he comes from the ancient era when humanity still called Terra Earth."

"To be watched by all four gods means he not only understands my essence, but also understands the essence of the others. What rare madness."

Tzeentch rapidly reached an answer close to the truth without even taking time to think. Yet he still did not know what kind of transmigrator this was—one who had crossed through time and space, or one who had crossed between universes.

Throughout his long observation plan, he had encountered such creatures before. For one reason or another, they crossed over, and in this chaotic, turbulent universe, they possessed countless possibilities. There were innumerable gaps in the scarred fabric of space through which one could pass.

As Tzeentch silently observed this transmigrator's essence, Slaanesh made the first move. That slave who obeyed only his own desires was fundamentally the same as the brute Blood God, whose mind held nothing but war and slaughter. He never thought before acting. But Tzeentch had no intention of warning these "friends." He was quite happy to let such fools scout the way for him.

As Slaanesh's power dispersed, followed by a shrill scream that made Tzeentch want to withdraw his gaze at once, Tzeentch saw the transmigrator standing calmly, seemingly completely unharmed.

In that instant, Tzeentch understood the transmigrator's essence. He was one of those beings Tzeentch least wished to remember.

A Subjective One beyond this universe.

The origin of the Subjective Ones remained unknown, but Tzeentch knew that place must stand above this universe. Every Subjective One existed on a higher level than this universe itself, and thus could suffer no injury or blow whatsoever. Yet Subjective Ones could alter already determined threads of fate through precognitive abilities that surpassed even Tzeentch's own.

The last time such a Subjective One had appeared was during the conflict between those soulless skeletons, the Old Ones, and the C'tan. A Subjective One had appeared at the very center of the battlefield. Through the observation instruments of those high-tech skeletons, they quickly discovered this strange presence on the battlefield, and what followed was a saturating bombardment of high-energy particle streams.

Yet to the skeletons' surprise and confusion, the high-energy particle streams, which should have completely erased any biological form and shattered everything at the molecular level, were utterly ineffective.

The Necrontyr used every weapon and method available to attack the Subjective One, but all they received was failure. In that mad age when they slaughtered the Old Ones, such a being severely disrupted the judgment of the Necrontyr commanders. They even believed for a time that it was a new weapon created by the Old Ones.

But as the war continued, the Subjective One's abilities were tested one by one. Aside from being unable to suffer any form of attack, the Subjective One was no different from an ordinary flesh-and-blood creature. He experienced joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure; he could eat, drink, defecate, and urinate, but did not need to do any of those things to survive. It seemed more like a ridiculous imitation adopted by the Subjective One to fit his identity as a creature of flesh.

A Subjective One could not be imprisoned or bound by any means. In a Subjective One's eyes, everything gave priority to his intentions, even when those intentions violated the laws of reality and the truths of the universe. The Necrontyr had once constructed a vast hyperspace labyrinth to hold a Subjective One in stasis, but the Subjective One merely felt flattered that they had built him a grand green monument. The prison that could confine Warp daemons and C'tan alike was, in the Subjective One's eyes, nothing more than a corridor he could pass through at will.

Weapons and prisons had both failed, so the Necrontyr decided to exile the Subjective One into endless space. They deliberately destroyed everything in an entire star sector, not even sparing the dust of the universe. That utterly dark and empty sector was an exile zone tailored specifically for the Subjective One.

But what the Necrontyr had not expected was that, while the Subjective One stood above this universe, he was also favored by it. All kinds of accidents would always propel the Subjective One toward one intersection of fate after another, as though the whole universe were merely an ordinary stage built around him, while he improvised upon it for unknown and mysterious spectators.

At this thought, Tzeentch felt fear. What sort of beings were the audience capable of making such an existence perform upon a stage?

Having failed by every possible means, the Necrontyr gave up pursuing and intercepting the Subjective One. They decided to pretend they had seen nothing and let him act freely. The Subjective One did not disappoint their neglect. He remained busy with his ridiculous activities, using Necrontyr advanced technology to make mischief, or playing at being a pirate and teasing the Aeldari. Sometimes, he even went around calling the Orks his brothers.

In Tzeentch's view, a Subjective One's power depended on the amount of knowledge he possessed.

The more one understood, the more one was constrained by knowledge. The more ignorant one was, the more one took one's own subjectivity as the highest guide.

For ordinary people, knowledge was power. For Subjective Ones, ignorance was omniscience.

It was like before humanity entered space, when they imagined and calculated the appearance of planets. Incorrect theories such as a round heaven and square earth flourished in that ignorant age.

A Subjective One was the same. If he had never known a planet's true form, then he could use his own thoughts to create a genuine world with a round heaven and square earth. Conversely, if a Subjective One knew a planet's true form, then the suggestions of his mind and the constraints of his thoughts would prevent him from imagining such a world.

That first-generation Subjective One possessed some knowledge, yet knew nothing at all about this universe. His grasp of basic physical laws was a complete mess. Precisely because of this, the first-generation Subjective One gained unimaginable power through his ignorant mind.

Creations proclaimed indestructible were as easy for that ignorant Subjective One to crush as a piece of tofu. Beams of destruction said to shatter entire stars felt no more than a passing breeze upon him. And the reason for it all was simply that he did not believe those complex, incomprehensible things could accomplish anything.

Just as the Necrontyr had grown accustomed to the Subjective One's existence, he vanished again. Just as his appearance had been without cause, so was his disappearance.

But this Subjective One seemed different from the previous one... He... he understood this universe very well... He understood everything, the past and the future... Wouldn't the suggestions of his mind and the constraints of his thoughts become his greatest weakness?

Tzeentch let out a strange chuckle. If that was the case... then this knowledgeable Subjective One would be far easier to deal with...