"If the first attempt does not triumph, the likelihood of the second succeeding is all the dimmer for it," - Thirteen Foundations of Vengeance.
The gate had taken him to the other end of the Kirshara Talon, from here the brooding light of the Ilmaea touched the Talon with it's diseased illumination, piercing through the branching spires of Low Commorragh like a solitary clearing in a haunted forest, bathing the murky depths in eternal twilight. The immense docking mega-structure seemed to be straining towards it, like a dark flower seeking rays of sustenance. For Naerion it was like being at the bottom of a deep undersea pit infested with millions of deadly creatures.
As Naerion followed the wrath covered trail, he now found himself willingly walking it, rather than seduced by it's dark promises. While it was debatable whether or not the pain and blood loss was affecting his perception of reality, he could honestly say he never felt more certain of were he was going.
Walking through the twilit streets, he passed through flesh markets selling varieties of slaves, from commonplace mon'keigh, to the very rare Exodite captive. Bids for the finest specimens were being called out, a female child was torn from it's weeping human sow, sold to a wrack to be inevitably subjected to the attentions of it's haemonculus master.
The voices grew ever louder as a collection of blue skinned aliens belonging to that new and advanced species calling itself the Tau. Their expressions of bewildered naivety and infantile horror obviously pleasing to the soul hungry crowd. Naerion continued onward.
He had come to accept that he would never be able to rejoin his kabal, he had fallen too far from High Commorragh to ever be able to return, and even if he got around to killing his sister, the kabal would still be just as inclined as ever to cast him aside. But what else could he ever be than Dracon Ynneath? What would he do now that part of his existence was at an end?
He gazed up towards the smog obscured shape of the Ilmaea hanging over the vermin infested hole that he had willingly descended into, with his sharp eyes he could just make out a few of the spires of High Commorragh, his home. He clenched his hands into fists.
A dark part of him, a part that had grown stronger ever since his sister's coup, urged him to slay anything that crossed his sight. He fought to keep it under control, as the last thing he wished to do was bring attention to himself, the kabals here were highly intolerant of open violence on the streets as it got in the way of the efficient operation of the Talon, and their warriors tended to shoot first and ask questions not at all.
Despite his wish to keep a low profile, the denizens crowding this district parted before him on instinct, obviously detecting his strong willingness to kill in the way he walked and carried himself. The fact that he was also covered helmet to boot in blood may also have been a contributing factor. Although blood covered warriors was not exactly an uncommon sight in Low Commorragh.
When he took a turn left down a narrow alley, he became aware that he was being followed. A pair of eldar who had been behind him for quite some time had taken the turn with him about two dozen paces away, and were looking suspiciously furtive in their steps, sloppy.
When they drew splinter pistols, that was all the reason he needed to kill them. He whipped around and opened fire with his splinter rifle, the would-be assassins were not wearing any armor, and went down with almost disappointing ease. It was only when he heard the subtle rasp of segmented plates did he realize he had been duped.
The real assassins, unmarked warriors clad in dark green armor, burst out of the buildings behind him and leveled their weapons to fire. Reacting quickly, Naerion leaped into cover behind the head of a fallen statue.
"Come out Ynneath! I am bringing your head to your sibling on a platter this day!" The supposed leader of the group shouted out over the din of hypersonic glass splinters impacting upon stone.
Naerion was curious about how they found him, but for now his immediate concern was either killing them or at the very least escaping this confrontation with his life.
"I am afraid that is quite out of the question," drawled a tired voice. Naerion leaned out of cover just in time to see the six assassins come under fire from an unknown source. Glittering starlike projectiles fell down from overhead, the assassins moved to find cover of their own, three of them were not so lucky.
The three writhed on the ground and their bodies swelled grotesquely inside their armor, moments later they exploded in a splash of blood, viscera, and broken sections of armor. While they were distracted Naerion shot the remaining warriors in the back, the fast-acting neurotoxin coating his splinters swiftly killed them.
He then edged out of cover to witness his mysterious benefactor.
It was a tall eldar, clad in an archaic looking high-collared black coat with hems that reached down to his knees. He wore a close-fitting doublet fashioned into the likeness of a skeletal ribcage on his torso, and comical looking bell-bottomed pants bi-patterned in black and white diamond motley on the right leg, and vertical red and black stripes on the left. Upon his head he wore a mask likened to a bleached skull. But most striking however was the large heavy support weapon that he carried in his black gloved hands, he identified it as a shuriken cannon a weapon used extensively by the craftworld cousins, but it was unlike any variant of the weapon he had ever seen.
"You need not be concerned with me, I mean you no harm," the bizarrely dressed eldar said, addressing Naerion.
Naerion was about to protest that statement before he noticed the a symbol inscribed on one of the large lapels of the stranger's coat, one that he knew very well.
"What business does the masque have in interfering with my affairs?" Naerion snapped at the heavily armed and recently identified Harlequin.
The Harlequin's mocking laughter made caused a light shiver to travel up Naerion's spine, "Business you say? Dear noble friend, I am in the business of dark entertainment," he gestured to the bloody smears that remained of the assassins he gunned down, "I was looking to expand my business, but if you believe I have overextended my business into your affairs I am deeply sorry," he said with a non-committal tone.
"Who are you?"
"Ah, my manners. Allow me to introduce myself properly," he slung his shuriken cannon over his shoulder and then about-turned dramatically.
"Hello! Here I am a humble Harlequin, casting himself humorously as both hero and hokie, by the harkening of fate. Hasting not to hilarity I stand hovering and heckling to hubris and hypocrisy, while happily disregarding hell, heresy, and hedonism of the high handed heirs of this city. Herebefore this honest introduction, I have heard hype and holler of homicide most horrible. Hereunto now I see Him, hunted, harassed, and hopeless, hurrying from home and harnessed of hate!"
The harlequin leaned upon his weapon like a cane as he continued, "Hereafter, I hear hymns heavy of hysteria and harmony. Heralding the homecoming of the honorable and the heedful."
He chuckled lightly, "This hefty, handling of wordage harbingers most horrid, so let me say it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me Hassarian."
Naerion stared at him blankly through his visor, "Why are you here?"
"Finally the real question," the Harlequin said, "As I said before, I am here on business. For you see, you have been most colorful in your efforts to evade capture these last few cycles, myself and my masque are intrigued," the Death Jester canted his stance slightly to the left, obviously in appraisal, "You are touched by the gift of Khaine, a hunger for discord that grows larger by the passing moment. What vision of destiny drives you so urgently onward my noble friend?"
"Where I am going is none of your concern, clown," Naerion snapped.
"Ah, then I shall indulge you in my foremost hypothesis. From your direction of travel, and your irate state of mentality I would venture to guess you seek the gate to the Shrine of the Ebon Blade."
Naerion's eyes narrowed as the realization of his destination fell upon him. Subconsciously he knew that his path was leading him to the dark shrines of the incubi, but was that what he truly wished. The doom of inescapable death had been lingering over him since he escaped the Rictrix Spire. Like all citizens of Commorragh, he knew it was only a matter of time before True Death claimed him, it could take a century or thousands of years but one way or another, She Who Thirsts would have Her due.
When he was a child, and deemed old enough to understand, he had wept bitter tears of anguish when he learned what his ultimate fate would be. Since that time he had striven to cheat death at every turn, and grasp for every advantage he possibly could. He was now quarter way through his fourth century of existence on the mortal plane, and he had long lost track of the number of slaves and kin that had suffered and died to keep him from the nightmare beyond death. While he cared not a whit for the atrocities he had committed (he was in fact rather proud of them), he was absolutely galled that all that preparation, toil, and effort would all come to nothing in the end.
"I take that as a yes then," Hassarian said.
"It is the only option left to me!" Naerion snarled. And that was the truth, the only other option would be to join Vect's cronies, forever forfeiting his pride in exchange for whatever time the Tyrant allowed him in this forsaken existence. And that was what suddenly hit him; survival was not enough.
"There are always choices," Hassarian admonished, "And while I do not understand the bloody-handed ways of the incubi, nor in any way condone them, it is your choice and yours alone."
Naerion lowered his head slightly in a clear sign of contempt for the Harlequin's words and moved to continue walking the trail that lead him towards destiny. He had to bite down a hiss of rage when he sensed the Death Jester following his steps not far behind.
"Although, I hope you won't mind company, for I have not in fact ever seen an incubus shrine before."
The Dark City was a rather curious place. Many had likened it to a cancer spreading through the Webway, as each realm the Commorrites discovered and conquered further expanded it's size and power. But to truly understand what Commorragh is, one has to first visit it in person.
Hassarian like all followers of Cegorach had the luxury to visit it not as slaves, but welcomed guests, and Hassarian came here more than most.
In their own forbidding way the denizens of the darkling city were fascinating. They were a living reminder of what the eldar were before the Fall, and yet they had managed to form a stable society and were possibly the most successful out of all the factions of their fractured race. It was almost as if the Eldar Empire had never truly been destroyed. And with that said, it's sins and splendors lived on through the works of the dark kin.
And with all of that considered, one would wonder why a masque of Harlequins would take an interest in someone like Naerion, who at first glance appears to be little more than another outcast Trueborn, irate and ever grasping for a return to prominence.
But Naerion was different, he could see that now as he followed the fallen dracon through the streets and alleys of Kirshara Talon. The Harlequins among other things kept an eye on specific individuals, eldar with the seeds of potential greatness within them; the ability to accomplish extraordinary things, both benign and terrible. And Hassarian was certain Naerion was more capable of the latter than the former.
The gate was up ahead, it was on the left side of the Talon close to the tip in a moderately busy market plaza, it was active and open to the Webway, and wherever realm the Shrine of the Ebon Blade was nestled in.
"A thought has crossed my mind Naerion," Hassarian said breaking the silence, a silence that Naerion had evidently enjoyed seeing the way his shoulders had slumped the moment he spoke. But Hassarian continued regardless, "The shrines of the incubi are many in number, why be lead to this one when surely others were closer?"
"Do you not have some morality play to attend to? Or are you trying to make my life more complicated?" Naerion demanded without turning around.
Hassarian gave him a condescending laugh in return, "My dear would-be supplicant of the murderous arts, my purpose in life extends far beyond writing ingenious sonnets and wearing this dashing wardrobe," for a moment Hassarian debated whether he should reveal to Naerion that he had crafted this skeletal costume from the remains of the masque's previous Death Jester, perhaps he would enlighten him at a later date, "Or as you so put it, complicating your existence."
"Then why bother me with inane questions?" Naerion hissed turning around to face him.
"Boredom naturally," Hassarian replied, Naerion's hand shifted slightly towards his sword, obviously a great battle of willpower was erupting in his mind, obviously deciding whether or not to kill him and end the conversation there. Killing Harlequins was one of the few things expressly forbidden in Commorragh.
"Once we reach the shrine, I will be rid of you," Naerion said with finality, turning around and continuing towards the gate.
Hassarian chuckled, "We? Getting attached to the idea of companionship already?"
Naerion said nothing in return. Upon reaching the luminous barrier of the gate, he walked straight through and vanished.
Hassarian followed in after him.
A/N: Short chapter I know. but next chapter Naerion will enter the world if the Incubus, and from there I will see if I can maintain the current record of Naerion killing someone in every chapter.
