The Musing of R. L. Frymire

FOR A TIME unknown, they battled unceasingly.

Days. Weeks. Longer.

The daemon was relentless. Vhy’liethe was beaten and battered, bruised and bleeding. Thirst. Hunger. Weariness. Bombarded by mortal weakness, he was near collapse. Still, he fought on. Not because he believed he would prevail. He no longer did. Nor was he driven by an animalistic instinct to survive. He was beyond fear. He was hopelessly, devastatingly, amused.

Over the centuries of his existence, he’d been so certain he’d play a pivotal role in the ultimate survival of his race, yet here he was, unable even to save himself.

How cruelly ironic.

How beautifully, woefully poetic!

Vhy’liethe continued to fight because he yet lived, and his foe was not yet dead.

Dy’Montesh taunted him. “Poor lover. So valiant. So weak. You cannot hope to defeat me.”

She rubbed her chelae along the contours of her body. The gesture should have disgusted him, but surrounded by her musk, poisoned by her toxins, his body betrayed him. Reacted in ways that would naturally repel him, yet did not. Flawless. Alluring. She was a goddess personified. And no matter how many times his blade cut her or how he struck her with the savage force of the aether, she remained imperfectly perfect.

“My body is not here, only my essence,” she reminded him. “Trapped. Like you. To touch me, you must embrace me.”

He chuckled mirthlessly at that. Either she would wear his face upon her chain, or his body as her meat puppet. It was the latter for which she strived, he knew. To escape her prison, she required flesh and bone. A host. Him.

Dy’Montesh could have killed him long ago. His reflexes had slowed drastically, and his concentration was tenuous at best. He could no longer reliably call upon the aether for strength, not without destroying what remained of his mind by the rioting energies that made up the other realm.

Fate stood before him, beauteous and cruel. Or behind him in ignominious defeat. A snicker escaped him. Once upon a time, failure denoted to shame. Humiliation.

Such foolishness. So laughable.

He should leave. Escape. Fight another day. Another battle. But for who? For what purpose?

Memory resurfaced. ‘Call upon the name of your divinity.’ Then a face. Or rather, an alabaster mask. A figure robed in white.

His lips parted to speak, yet Ynnead’s name would not come. Instead, he snorted a surprised guffaw, knowing it would be the Harlequin who would come to his rescue, not the Whispering God. Only the Harlequin observed his struggles. His ignoble defeat. For Ynnead was dead.

Deader than dead.

A false deity who. Did. Not. Exist.

Yvraine, the prophetess, had duped him.

Over the last few decades, he’d given his life to the Ynnari. To a lie. There was no anger. No burning shame. An insane chuckle bubbled up Vhy’liethe’s throat. He did nothing to suppress the tumultuous sound.

With a dangerous narrowing of magenta eyes, the daemon vanished, believing he laughed at her. Then he felt it. Inside him. Reaching through his back, through meat and bone. His merriment was cut off by this new sensation. There was no pain, no wound from where she penetrated him, yet he could feel his heart embraced by a coiling tongue. Incorporeal, yet not. Entangling him.

The daemon spoke from behind him, lisping with a wrathful hiss, “Embrace me or die.”

As though from a great distance, he heard an echo of mischievous laughter, penetrating his skull. Then he felt it. An awareness. An unfathomable consciousness. Just a fraction of a god’s attention. Directed towards him. Vhy’liethe’s soul quivered under the strain, the weight unbearable. And real. His vision went white, then burst into colourful stars. Images flashed—a premonition. He saw a tome encased in purple canvas, with the mark of She Who Thirsts etched onto the cover. Of flames erupting, eating away at the pages, consuming the secrets within.

The vision faded, leaving Vhy’liethe shaken.

“Be not afraid,” cooed Dy’Montesh, misunderstanding his reaction. “You and I, we were meant to. Come. Take me inside. Become one with me.”

Vhy’liethe hardly heard. Ynnead had been a fool’s dream. Now, a true god had come. Had chosen to reveal himself to Vhy’liethe. Offering salvation—and death.

The artifact was more than a scarred tomb. It was a symbol. A physical representation of all of Vhy’liethe’s dreams. For centuries, he’d searched for knowledge. For power. To save the aeldari from destruction.

With the death of Ynnead, his loyalties had crumbled.

But to destroy the artifact as the vision suggested was to destroy all of Vhy’liethe’s ambitions. Every. Last. One. Reality was harsh. Unforgiving. He was no grand saviour as he’d always believed himself to be. He was nothing. Less than insignificant.

Worse, they were doomed. The aeldari would die. Every. Last. One.

And it was hilarious. He threw his head back and laughed. He couldn’t stop, even when the stricture around his heart tightened cruelly.

Dy’Montesh spoke, but Vhy’liethe was deaf to her words. Power infused him, the Laughing God’s gift. With a wave of his arm, he conjured an inferno of psychic energy, where it consumed the daemon’s anchor to this realm. With the destruction of the tomb, her grip on him faded, her enraged cry grew fainter, and his ego burned to cinders.

He felt unbearable loss. Unimaginable grief. And irrepressible mirth.

Vhy’liethe didn’t realize he was both laughing and weeping until the sound of another’s joyous merriment joined his. He turned and saw Iayaniar.

“Life is a jest!” Vhy’liethe shouted with a sweep of his arms as he twirled. All his fatigue seemed to vanish under bubbling laughter and the unbearable pressure of unending self-pity.

All around him, the temple had vanished, leaving an empty room with walls of glimmering obsidian. The monolith had returned to its natural configuration. “And we,” he continued loudly, maudlin, “are at the center of existence’s merciless contempt.”

“You’ve gone quite mad, Reborn,” mused Iayaniar happily.

Vhy’liethe shook his head, correcting, “I am undone. And we—all of us!—are doomed!”

Suddenly, two figures appeared from the shadows to stand on either side of Iayaniar.

“You are kindred. A fellow lost soul. Finally, you see death’s inevitability. Embrace fatalistic despair. Channel desolation’s symphony,” the newcomer, a shadowseer, both soothed and encouraged, yet his voice was woefully despondent.

On the other side of Iayaniar stood a different troupe master. Similair to Iayaniar, the silent figure wore a long white overcoat, but unlike Iayaniar, the lower half was patterned in red and white diamonds that matched his boots and gloves, while the lapels mirrored the sky-blue of his hair crest, as well as the large gem embedded in his wide belt. The rest of his clothes were a pristine white.

Though the shadowseer’s ensemble was vastly different in style, his costume had a similar red and white diamond effect along both sleeves and pant legs. His chest plate was solid red, with a blue sash wrapped around his waist and cowl upon his head. But what really drew the eye was both the shadowseer’s mask, which was nothing but reflective glass, and the large flutes curling above his head that were attached to his creidann grenade launcher strapped to his back.

Both Harlequin bore the rune of the lamented dead over their breast, an inverted hook with two, vertical pillars bridged in the middle by a horizontal beam.

Whereas Iayaniar was troupe master within the Masque of Frozen Stars, the two, unknown Harlequin heralded from the Masque of the Shattered Mirage. Where the former Masque possessed a genuine hope for the future for the aeldari, the latter accepted their inevitable end, and in so achieving inevitable victory.

Saying nothing, the troupe master of the Shattered Mirage held out a mask, an exact replica of the shadowseer’s mirrored visage. The moment Vhy’liethe looked upon the false face, something within him resonated, clicking into place. It felt as though he’d been striving for years, searching for something he could not name. Now, here it was. And it had a face, truer than the flesh molded over the contours of his own skull.

As true as Cegorach himself.

“Come, Vhy’liethe. Join the Masque of the Shattered Mirage. Dance the masquerade of lament and secure ascendency,” portended the shadowseer.

As though compelled, Vhy’liethe answered—not the shadowseer’s encouragement, but the draw of the mask. His face.

When he took the reflective mask in hand, for the first time in centuries, he did not recoil at the contact against his bare fingers. It felt right. Though his heart was marked by despair, his mind cast in the pits of disillusionment, he felt a jubilant glee, a tumultuous peace when he secured his true face over his visage.

The other shadowseer spoke again. “Your shroud has been lifted, Vhy’liethe. Let us depart. You have much to learn of tumult’s end.”