After some time spent debating culinary technique with the gourmand Nurgle, Orsaga drained the remainder of his bowl and—without ceremony—ate the bone vessel as well.
Tzeentch, watching the display, fell silent for a moment. He closed the book composed of countless bones and returned it to the enormous, non-physical bookshelf behind him — an externalization of his power that contained almost every scrap of knowledge in this universe, even the fleeting thoughts and likely futures of ordinary minds. In a certain sense, Tzeentch was omniscient here; yet even that omniscience was only relative. The other Chaos Gods possessed analogous means to achieve similar reach, though expressed through different domains.
When the book and shelf quietly faded, the mouths at the base of Tzeentch's wings spoke in measured tones:
"He's waking soon. I think we should preassign what each of us will take from him."
Tzeentch's current form resembled a humanoid slug sprouting wings; as the God of Change, his appearance was never fixed, and his temperament was even less predictable: praise could be punished, insults rewarded. Being his follower was, by all accounts, an exercise in bad luck.
The "he" to whom Tzeentch referred was the soon-to-awaken fifth Chaos God — Slaanesh. With a new sibling about to rise, the elder gods had gathered to divvy up whatever spoils might accompany that birth. Slaanesh was the last of the five to appear and, consequently, the weakest; if anyone could be plundered, it would be him. Important prizes might be out of reach, but there would still be plenty of lesser riches worth claiming.
Of course, "soon" was measured in Chaos-God terms: by the Prime Universe's clock, there remained roughly ten thousand years.
Orsaga touched his ear and spoke first, casual as ever:
"I have some followers among the Aeldari. I'll take a portion of them from Slaanesh."
He said it without drama. Though his devotion to those adherents was not fanatical, Orsaga felt he could spare them a chance — pull them back from Slaanesh's table. Whether Slaanesh resented being robbed of his first feast mattered little; he was the weakest, and no one expected him to fight back effectively.
Khorne — his canine visage curling in contempt — asserted his own claim next:
"I want the Aeldari war-god Khaine. He is my private property."
In this universe, gods of war and victory naturally belonged to Khorne's sphere; Khorne would not tolerate Slaanesh absorbing something that properly fell under his domain.
Nurgle, thinking of his next cauldron, spoke up in his slow, contented way:
"I will take the Aeldari goddess of life, Isha."
Nurgle's remit extended beyond a single pantheon — he claimed authority over the broad concept of life itself, from sentient beings down to bacteria. That is why he so delighted in stews of contagion: to him, converting life into beds for microbes quickly multiplies diversity and abundance. Nurgle might be crude in method — sometimes turning living creatures into mindless rot or accidentally toppling a civilization with a plague — but among the Chaos Gods he could be considered the least malicious. He neither relished wanton cruelty nor demanded harsh tributes; his aim was the expansion of life, however messy the means. After his declaration, he slumped back, bubbling with ideas for his next broth. Orsaga's culinary lecture had left him inspired.
When the three had finished, Tzeentch nodded and selected his share:
"I will take the Aeldari scholars and their libraries."
Though Tzeentch himself already knew nearly every scrap of knowledge available on this universe, certain sources remained shielded by unusual methods and lay outside his reach. The Aeldari vaults contained precisely that kind of arcane heritage — relics passed down from the Prime Universe's first sapient civilization, the Old Ones.
The Old Ones had been mighty: they built exotic webways through the Warp, using subspace like highways to traverse the Prime Universe safely and swiftly. In their heyday even stellar devourers avoided antagonizing them; they sometimes acted as cultural midwives, seeding new civilizations across the cosmos. The Aeldari were among their creations. Endowed with five-strand DNA, innate psyker ability, and average lifespans of a millennium, the Aeldari had inherited much of the Old Ones' legacy when that civilization fell. Those bequests provided the foundation for Aeldari supremacy.
With Tzeentch's claim stated, the four gods reached a brittle accord. They had arranged their preemptive divisions more than ten thousand years before Slaanesh's awakening, securing their shares in advance and ensuring the newborn would have little recourse.
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