My ears perked up as I caught a sound very much like a pained breath escaping someone's lips just before they caught themselves. I smiled widely as my steps accelerated, and this awkward silence would end finally, both of my companions were brooding so hard that I was feeling hesitant to interrupt them without reason but thankfully someone was nice enough to do so in my place.

Not that I needed any distraction from having no damned idea how to get out of this sub-dimension, none at all. I wasn't.

"Someone is in here, close," I said, jumping over a collapsed statue that had some crushed bones underneath it with a large skull making it evident that the being that was unfortunate enough to die here was an Ork.

"Who?"

"Not sure," I shrugged, jogging towards the sound as I kept my eyes out for any would-be ambushers even if none of my senses caught anything other than this one person, "I only hear a pained breathing from ... there."

I pointed towards what looked like a pile of bloody cloth and some gore from the distance but as I got close the surroundings became clearer. The floor was filled with corpses in several states of messed up from diced to crushed all the way to burned and with a little bit of everything in between. I snatched up a few chunks more or less sneakily as I went past them and got the sense that most of them were very damned weird, as in a mix of fungus and normal biology.

Tiny tendrils that couldn't be seen with the naked eye crept over the broken stone pavement and rushed at the many fallen remains of what I assumed were orcs. Before the other two could even come close enough to see the corpses, they were gone aside from a single one that wasn't quite a corpse yet. On the plus side, he didn't seem like an ork either.

He was under one of the bigger and more intact fungal monsters before I gobbled it up and so even as he lay there half-consciously. From the looks of it he could still make out that something was happening.

"You look like an Eldar," I noted as I kneeled down in front of him so I could look him straight in the eye, "how're you doing?"

"Not good," he gurgled with a meaningful glance down at the Orkish powerclaw going into his gut, I looked at him with a bit of awe, one claw was almost as large as this guy's head and he was still alive with it poking into and out of him.

"An Eldar?"

"An acute observation, ex-captain."

"Do you know your way around this part of the webway?" I asked, letting my palm rest on the powerclaw as I stared into his vibrant amethyst-colored eyes.

"Yes," he wheezed, his head even nodding a bit.

"Alrighty," I nodded, "I'll heal you and you will lead us to an exit that leads to somewhere safe for us, nod if you agree?"

He nodded, his half-dead gaze gaining a calculating edge as he stared at me.

"This will hurt ... I think," I said as I ripped the claw out of him, earning myself a primal scream cut off as he locked his jaw.

My other palm came to rest above his injury as I first flooded him with biomantic — Biomancy-tic fuck, whatever— healing and once he was starting to look a bit better I placed my palm on the slowly healing wound and flooded him with tiny tendrils of my eldritch flesh, they quickly ate up all the dead flesh and settled in to replicate all his missing bones, organs, muscles and skin based on my Eldar genetic template.

As I retracted my hand the last of my eldritch tendril retracted from him and only a fully healed Eldar staring blankly at his healed stomach was left. I stepped back once as my cheek came to rest on my upheld right fist, my head tilted as I flickered my eyes all over his form. The Eldar was tall, I could tell that much even if he was sitting at the moment, at least two meters tall if not more and his long black hair must have been smooth and silky before getting doused in blood.

He had artistic high cheekbones and an angular jawline that went well with his thin face, his eyes as I said were amethyst and were a bit angled and larger than the size of his face would suggest for a human.

"Why did you heal him?" Selene hissed at me as I watched him rise to his feet.

"He will guide us."

"Eldar can hardly be trusted."

"Experience or hearsay?" I glanced at her.

"Experience," she grimaced, "they'd do the most outlandish things if it was required by one of their hair-brained prophecies."

"Let's hope he wants us out of his precious little webway as much as we want to leave this place behind."

I had no illusion that he couldn't hear us, we were standing barely five meters away from him and those pointy ears had to be useful for something aside from aesthetics.

"Greetings," the man started once he collected himself, you wouldn't be faulted for forgetting him nearly dying not long ago if it weren't for the gaping hole in the front of his robe and the overall bloody state of his clothing, "I am Valenith, from Craftworld Ulthwé. Thank you for saving my life."

"If you intend to keep your word then there is no need for thanks," I retorted, daring him to go back on his words.

"I'm fully intent on keeping my word," he said, "coincidentally there is supposed to be a disabled Gateway just that way," he pointed right where we came from and Selene was starting to give him stinky looks.

"Coincidentally," I said, "we came through that Gateway," he stared at me, his large eyes going wide, "I don't think that gate is functional with it being in quite a few parts after Zedev there decided to 'shut it down'."

Zedev of course, said nothing, far too distracted by unblinkingly staring at the live Eldar right in front of him.

"So you came through the Alariath Gateway," he was now staring into space, then his gaze moved between the three of us like he was evaluating us or judging us by some weird metric, his eyes stopped at me and I think I felt some Warp energy brush against my skin which made me grimace and gave me goosebumps, "Yes, I will escort you to wherever you wish to go."

The feeling left as quickly as it came and I stared at him dubiously as he stood there, looking quite satisfied with himself for some reason.

"So," I started before Selene could say whatever was brewing in that frowny little head of hers, "is there another Gateway nearby that leads to a safe place? I don't want to end up in a spacehulk or something."

"Nearby ... not as such but it is certainly reachable," he took on a pensive expression. "By myself, I doubt I'd be able to reach it as the way there is infested with Orks and Drukhari raiders scout it for any 'fresh meat' that'd wander into the area, but with your assistance, I think it'd be possible."

"How far is it?" I asked, unwilling to think about why that 'you' didn't feel plural but singular and referencing me.

"I could reach it in a day if it weren't for the obstructions," he grimaced, "but with your slower speed I'd say a week."

"Great," I nodded, "you lead the way."

"Magos, I'd be thankful if you could keep an eye on him for me."

"Understood," he said, much too happy to continue visually dissecting the Aeldari.

I fell into step behind them right next to Selene. Our pace was faster than before as the space elf led with intent behind his steps while my leading before leant more towards wandering into a vague direction.

I stared at his back as tendrils of soul energy extended out of me and started poking and prodding at him. I was being careful to see whether or not he'd notice but for now, I seemed to be in the clear. I wasn't too worried about being noticed though, he was doing the same to me before and I wasn't going to apologize for doing it to him. He didn't have any energy actively in his body so I couldn't just 'taste' what sort of energy went through him, instead I wanted to see how it'd feel for my energy to go through him.

I started small, infinitesimal tendrils of soul energy seeped into him and started exploring around whatever psychic pathways he used. These pathways were metaphysical in a way, sort of like my mindscape if leaning a bit more towards realspace instead of the immaterium. I could feel it with my energy but I knew I wouldn't see a thing even with the best microscope if I were to dissect him.

I had an urge to just burst into him with all my power and yank his soul and mind to me through that connection I felt deep within him, to extract whatever knowledge and experience he had from there. He was alive, unlike all the humans and stuff I found and my companions wouldn't make a fuss about me killing an Eldar. I wasn't sure I could get anything as I didn't do mind diving before but I was sure I'd get something. I was itching to get my hands on some actual psychic know-how and this man seemed to have centuries of experience with them. I WANTED it.

I NEED IT.

"You know my grandmother took me on one of her voyages when I was young," all my dark urges were pushed into the depths of my mind as I tore my gaze away from the sweating back of the Eldar. Selene was annoyingly enough, staring right where I was staring a moment ago with a sort of nostalgic look that could easily be mistaken for a dreamy one, "it was a short journey looking back on it, it barely took a year. We went to trade with a smaller craftworld I think, or maybe it was an Exodite world."

"So this isn't your first time seeing an Eldar?" I put a smile on my face as I wondered if I'd have stopped myself from picking apart the Eldar were it not for Selene interrupting me.

"No," she shook her head with a gentle motion, "I thought they were beautiful back then, they were so elegant and graceful that my young self didn't notice the signs of barely hidden arrogance."

"That they even tried to hide it speaks volumes of your grandmother."

"I guess so," she sighed wistfully and I had the tact to not ask about what happened to the woman. "Since then I've run into different groups of them and the one thing I learned is that they'd slaughter a human world filled with innocent children if it saved the life of a single Eldar."

"That's about right," I nodded.

"I know you have a reason to 'trust' that one but keep what I said in mind," she said with a sideway glance.

"Well," I smiled at her, "I saved one Eldar life so far so a bit of guidance for us shouldn't be too much to ask," I turned my gaze to the back of our guide, "but it can also be seen as him acting like a good guide to preserve an Eldar life."

When I looked back at Selene she was smirking which made me smile too.

I wonder if I could bully him into teaching me about psychic powers.