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Her steps are light upon the moon’s road.
She disturbs not a single beam of the light that dapples cracked marble, an auroral display passing slowly along the avenue as the ancient priesthood once did. It is death or worse to bask in that strange, sourceless luminance. There is no sky above, no stars, no clouds, no place from which the light issues. Only hairline fractures of dark over dark, trembling softly like eyelashes that threaten the opening of a celestial Eye. She keeps her gaze to the road ahead, to the defaced statues and memorials that line the way, to the shadows flitting beneath crumbled temples.
Where once there would be voices raised in joy and welcome, giving thanks to the gods, there is now a hollow silence. The pantheon is gone. One deity alone holds dominion over the cradle-worlds of the Aeldari, and they brook no trespass.
Ten millennia and more have wrought a fundamental change. Half-sunken into the Warp, twisted by a cruel and patient will, the Crone Worlds are ethereal places. The rancid odour of carrion mingles with too-strong perfume. Sights and smells deceive and confuse, tangling the present and the past. The reality of the Fall is entwined with the height that preceded it. A careless wanderer would find themselves chasing ghosts down paths that no longer exist. Walking forever, mesmerised by visions of perfection.
Only Lileath’s ways remained straight and true. Those dedicated to the Mother endured, while the walks of the Daughter, the Crone, the Smith and the Bloody-Handed were turned to dark purpose. Her blessing remained beyond her devouring, a final gift to her children.
Yet true did not mean safe.
The walker came to a halt, setting her feet away from the soul-searing tracks of Warplight. Her gloved hands hitched at her hips, the rubies set upon her wrists glowing sullenly. The gaudy bangles were not ornaments, but rather those menacing twins of Aeldari ingenuity, the Kiss and the Caress. Though seemingly casual, to those who had witnessed the deadly dance of the Harlequinade her stance was that of a gunslinger preparing to draw.
She waited for a moment. The silence answered her stillness in the same tongue as it had her motion.
She sighed. ‘Come out from there,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll send you back to the Palace a piece at a time.’
’A parley?’ came the high-pitched reply from the lee of a shattered arch that had once proclaimed the Mother’s mercy, wreathed in petals and scripture. A giggle accompanied it. ’Knowing what I am? You have learned little if you still believe daemons can be bargained with, Harlequin.’
‘I said nothing of bargains.’
’The arrogance of the Aeldari is truly boundless.’
‘You would know much of that, wouldn’t you?’
A pause. A hiss. ’Very well. Only because I am ever-curious, rather than your empty threats.’
It did not creep from the shadows. It flowed, grew, like a pool of black ice meltwater. Cold and deep. It emerged in the form of a mature gyrinx, fur sleek and shining, long ears flat, tail swishing. Body low to the broken stone as though it feared the sky would snatch it up now it had shown itself.
She was not impressed.
‘A Prince in exile. Do you think She-Who-Thirsts cannot find you here? Or is it other tormentors you flee?’
The black gyrinx sniffed, whiskers twitching. Tail wrapped around forepaws as it considered the Harlequin with crimson eyes. ’I made a mock of the Dark Prince in the lower circles. A ribald jest. Yet my fellow revellers did not find it as amusing, and so I have quit the Palace for a time until their short memories fade.’
‘The Seventh Way has fouled the Pale Court’s mood.’
’Quite. Everything is a joke when one considers oneself invincible.’
She did not rise to the bait. ‘And now the humour is forced, for the Ynnari rise, and bring true death with them.’
’My pursuers fear. So I have come to a place they dare not follow, knowing the conjunction was soon at hand.’
She blinked, tapped a finger on the crystal flex weave of her flip-belt. ‘Conjunction?’
’You.’
‘Ah.’
’Even daemons have daemons, alas. The lesser fear your arrival - they will not risk my trail, no matter their anger - and the greater busy themselves with momentous tasks. Shalaxi stalks the death god’s herald. Zarakynel plots renewal. The Masque… even I do not know the mind of the Masque.’
‘You seek my head to reclaim your standing, then.’
A shiver. A shake, as if the thought of engaging the Harlequin was anathema. ’No. I have learned better than to believe I could best the Laughing God’s chosen. Your soul is forfeit. You are Hers, in the end. I need only wait for the pleasure of your flesh between my teeth.’
Again, her finger tapped the belt. The rubies pulsed a warning. ‘I have never known her creatures to be patient.’
The air changed as the gyrinx rose, thickened, as though choked by miasma. In a place so steeped in pain and suffering, so close to the Great Ocean, a daemon’s presence became a physical thing. Even a lesser being would have a fierce aura, but that of the gyrinx’s dark majesty was overwhelming. A Prince, in truth.
Fangs bared. ’I know a secret,’ the beast growled. ’Something not written in the Black Library.’
Colour swirled across the Harlequin’s holo-suit, a flare and crackle of violets and purples that masked her tensing muscles. In motion, she would become a fading blur, her psychic arts enhancing her already formidable agility to supernatural levels. The strength and speed to overmatch an ascended in the heart of their realm.
‘Her creatures are also known,’ she replied, weapons powered, ‘to keep their secrets.’
’Perhaps I shall share this one.’
‘You were ever fickle.’
’I chose my own way. There is a difference.’
‘And look what you have bought with such coin.’
Another growl, low and vicious. The gyrinx stalked down the rubble, claws piercing stone, onto Lileath’s path. The Warplights passed over it, through it, seamlessly. Their mutating grip found nothing that would alter. The creature’s form was as firm as its will.
She circled, carefully avoiding the strange light herself, keeping the daemon in sight.
It defied her accusation of impetuousness, refusing to make the first move.
She knew it had spoken truly of being afraid to match her, blade to claw. She counted amongst the Laughing God’s greatest servants. In single combat, even in this perilous state, she could dispatch the daemon. Yet the effort would tax her, and she had other duties to perform. There was a risk of the violence vibrating through the choppy waters of the Warp, drawing the attention of greater predators.
’You consider the attention of the Neverborn,’ the gyrinx said, still circling. ’Wise. Yet know that I am considered a pariah, marked in ways you cannot perceive. They will not interfere, save to consume the scraps of the defeated.’
‘There are easier ways to seek death.’
’For my kind? Ha. You know nothing, little Solitaire. In the time of the Empire’s height, they called the game ‘patience’. Do you understand?’
‘It seems of little relevance now.’ She triggered the Caress, enveloping her fist in a phase-field. ‘I have never known the Empire as anything but this debased remnant.’
’Debased? I would say enlightened.’
‘A matter of perspective.’
’Solitaire is a game played by oneself, against oneself. A testing of limits. Of patience. And in my distance from the Court, I have become something of a soloist, myself. A patient performer, awaiting his stage.’
The admission caught her off-balance, though her guard did not waver. ‘When was your exile?’
The flames behind the gyrinx’s eyes dimmed a moment, a paw hung mid-air. ’In the Great Ocean, time has no meaning.’
‘You do not know.’
’No. I do not. Only that I have roamed Morai-Heg’s graveyard for what seems an eternity…’
‘...waiting.’ She finished the halted sentence. ‘For death.’
’For release.’
‘Do you truly long for the Palace, that you cannot bear to be parted from it? Or have you finished your sampling of sensation?’ She let the disgust creep into her voice. ‘Are you finally sated?’
The beast’s eyes fired again, hot and angry. ’There are delights that cannot be found within the Palace, just as there are paths outside the Maze and life beyond the Garden.’
‘That is not what you seek.’
’It… is not.’
‘Then speak true, for I tire of your dissembling, and have many miles to travel before my task is done.’
’I have waited to… witness.’
Ah, there. She can see it, now. The heart, the shame-faced heart of the matter. For behind the crimson, beneath the sleek fur, there was once… no. It is too soon, too tender, to give it words. To give it anything but acknowledgement would destroy it, and she has killed too much - too many - to be anything but considerate of where next her blade may fall.
‘The Dance Without End.’
The heat fades. The great cat becomes a crouching kitten once more. Shadows recede, evaporate, draw back into sleek fur once more. A world anchored inside itself. For a daemon is little but focus, an existence that is an eternal yelling into the void to affirm itself. They are not only what the mortal races believe them to be. They are what they believe of themselves.
Rubies lose their lustre. The phase-field recedes. Muted shades envelop the holo-suit once more.
‘Your peers were right,’ she chuckled. ‘You are a poor jester.’
The gyrinx makes no reply. It appears more unreal with every passing moment, as though fading into the soul-shriven backdrop of the Eye, as though the winds that skirt the Great Ocean’s surface cut through the very core of it.
We are all what we believe.
‘Follow.’ She turned away from the creature, and back to Lileath’s path. ‘If you must.’