Scene 1

Craftworld Attika, Present Day

The Asuryani gathered round the whirling colors upon the black and white canvas of the players’ attire as they leapt and lunged across the open street. The people of Attika are not watching any mere gaggle of eccentric performers. No, they are witnessing a troupe of the Masque of the Last Laugh in their full splendor. To a Harlequin all battles are a performance and all performances are battles. Even these seemingly frivolous street performances are regarded with the same meticulous perfection that their battle plans against the Ruinous Powers demand.

The man wearing the snarling smile of a Cegorach mask with the blood red and beaming orange mohawk in center of the dazzling dance knows all too well that there is no distinction between the two. Odyn Maitar, the troupe leader and lead player in their performance of The Last Laugh, watched his players cartwheel, cavort, and tumble with a speed that even his well-trained Aeldari eyes struggled to keep pace with. Between their black body suits, white coats, and bright diamond patterns, they blurred out of sight even without their holosuits activated. He knows that the war against Chaos is won or lost in the minds of mortal masses. To triumph in their god’s great gambit, they must paint a most captivating portrait of the reality they wish to achieve. To that end they have yet to fail.

The asuryani stand awestruck by the spectacle. Clouds of multi-colored psychoactive powder fill their lungs with every gasps. The shadowseer, who always plays the role of Tzeentch, works his charms upon the ground to heighten their already heightened senses. To the mind’s eye of their audience, the clouds are mighty nebulas of the cosmos, the dimly lit street is as the black void of deep space, and the drone light may as well be a heavenly beam. The elegant forms of his players must appear as both angels and demons: alluring yet treacherous.

They’re in the final stretch of the final act: the Rhana Dandra. Their solitaire, for whom the role of Slaanesh is solely reserved, has met their end at the hands of Ynnead. The newly birthed god, played by their death jester, raised his hands and balls of light representing the Aeldari souls levitated off the ground. Now free from Slaanesh’s grasp, they shot up into the air and exploded into a dazzling array of starlight. With the precise gesturing of the shadowseer, those stars tell the tales of their ancestors freed from their cruel fate. Men and women alike begin to tear up or even weep but there is no sorrow to be found among them.

There has been a sea change among the Aeldari in the recent times. Odyn can feel it thick in the air. The glorious stench of hope radiated off these once defeated people. He breathed it in deeply. It is a far sweeter high than any narcotic could ever produce. The Great Enemy uttered their last bitter breath and the audience exploded with zealous joy. Yet this crescendo tis not the end.

All the players flew off into the darkness that surrounded the spotlight and the crowd grew quiet. Then Odyn and the Shadowseer entered the stage. It is for precisely this moment that only the two best players in the troupe can play the roles of Cegorach and Tzeentch. The Chaos god of change, magic, and deceit stares down the Aeldari laughing god. Both are the greatest tricksters in existence. Both hold claim to the domains of knowledge and hope. Both are the grand architects of fate in the universe. At the end of all things, there can only be one divine master of that domain.

On the fringes of the light the drama between the other remaining Ruinous Powers plays itself out. The player representing the Aeldari god of war, Kaela Mensha Khaine, crosses swords with the player representing the Chaos god of slaughter, Khorne. After a spectacular duel, Khaine prevails and assumes Khorne’s domain. On the opposite side, the Aeldari goddess of the harvest, fertility, and life escapes the clutches of Nurgle, the Chaos god of death and decay, and cleanses the domain of his filth as he withers away.

All that remained were Cegorach and Tzeentch. The great tricksters wordlessly circled one another, chuckling and giggling under their breath. The shadowseer was dressed in Tzeentch’s colors: multitudinous hues of pulsating blues and pinks. Odyn drew his power sword as the shadowseer raised his staff.

“Alas; my dance partner, her unrequited paramour, and my pungent nemesis lay slain. All according to plan,” the shadowseer uttered Tzeentch’s line.

“Oh, come foul Infinity! The dance of Rhana Dandra is done. Let us decide this in our fashion,” Odyn said Cegorach’s reply.

At those words, the players threw away their weapons. The final duel of The Last Laugh is not a contest of might, but of cunning. It is a clash decided by wit and words. What’s more, the outcome of it is not foretold. It is left to genuine chance and as such the Masque of the Last Laugh never writes down nor rehearses the exchange. Thus, no two performances are ever truly the same.

“What is the petulant adolescence of a Necron called?” the shadowseer asked.

“The Imperium of Man,” Odyn answered.

The players upon their makeshift stage fired salvoes of incendiary and incising insult with a speed and veracity that put all prior physical performance to shame.

“What’s the difference between the Adepta Sororitas and the orks?” Odyn asked.

“Don’t know, they’re both a bunch of murderous idiots imagining inane absurdity into existence,” the shadowseer snapped back.

“True, but one is unsightly rapidly spreading mass of puss, like a fungal infection. The other, like a venereal disease, is a horrific burning that’ll make you regret all your ‘sinful’ ways,” Odyn strutted away, as the crowd laughed but all his opponent offered was a finger wag.

The whole conceit of the game is to get your opponent to laugh first. As the momentum builds and neither shows any sign of breaking, the two players run up on one another, prance about, and preen to the audience in their own turns. With every exchange the claims grow increasingly ludicrous, and the crowd adores it. They chime in with their own array of “ooos” and “awwwws”.

“What do you call a human with a sylvan fetish?” the shadowseer asked.

“Farseer Iarwain of Mal’ehtë,” Odyn shot back.

“I said a human with a sylvan fetish, not the other way around.”

“Oh! Of course! Otherwise it’s just called bestiality,” Odyn snarked.

“No, no, no,” the shadowseer chuckled, “you call him Lord Commander.”

In the intensity of this moment, minutes move like decades. By pitting the two best verbal combatants against one another, it elevated their performance. Regardless of their own emotional attachments as Aeldar, in this moment they are competitors on stage and neither will suffer to lose. Though eventually one must.

“So Tzeentch, what does a monkeigh call a self-defeating failure who ruins all they touch?’ Odyn asked.

“Fidus Cryptman,” the shadowseer shot back. The crowd burst out howling with laughter. Odyn felt the noise rushing up his throat. Thankfully his face was hidden behind the mask and his opponent couldn’t see the open-mouthed smile upon his visage.

“No,” he composed himself, “they call it god-emperor.”

Many of the crowd doubled over and more than a fair share wept with laughter. The shadowseer snapped his head away, attempted to cover his face, but the unmistakable sound of a dry, wheezing chuckle emanated through his mask. The victor had been decided. In keeping with the traditions and good gamesmanship, the loser bowed to the victor. Today Cegorach won, but as always, that result was anything but certain.

All that was left was the final action of the play. Cegorach and Tzeentch removed their masks and laughed in unison with one another. Then they turned to take their bows simultaneously. They were then joined by the remainder of the troupe and took their bows as a unit after removing their masks.

The player to Odyn’s left is the woman who played Isha. He lost himself in her beauty for a moment. Her magenta eyes shine like starlight. His thoughts raced with contemplations of her. She squeezed his hand gently to acknowledge she picked up on it through a surface reading of his mind. The same thoughts flashed across her mind. It was a flawless performance and only one thing could make this night perfect.

Odyn bent Mĕilì down and kissed her passionately. The crowd hollered with approval. The shadowseer manifested a pulsating cloud of multicolored fog and the troupe vanished into the webway as they activated their personal portal devices. All the players flew down the hurtling tunnels of cosmic brilliance towards their mind’s desired location. Being perfectly in mental synch with one another, Odyn and Mĕilì popped out of the web way into their shack.

The quaint pile of timber nestled in the top of a mighty tree in the recess of Attikan’s wilded woods, made a perfect nest for the two of them. They threw themselves on top of their bedding. Bit by bit all articles of apparel were removed. Mĕilì undid her waist length braided pony tail, allowing her luscious blue hair to billow freely over the subtle curves of her body.

They lost themselves in each other. As their bodies melded together, so did their minds and spirits. All the joys, all their ecstasies flooded one another’s thoughts. The wondrous expanse of the cosmos and the nigh infinite paths of web hurdled through their minds. If only for the briefest of seconds, they existed in all the places they ever made love.

“Odyn!” Mĕilì cried in pleasure, “I love you!”

“Mĕilì! Oh Mĕilì! I want to spend my eternity in you.”

The instant after he said, Odyn caught his cognizant flub. He meant to say “with you”. Mĕilì lovingly smiled and nuzzled her face against his. As they found their rhythm, they breathed heavier and heavier.

“Yes my stars…yes my stars… nĩn- nĩn, athon!”she whispered between passionate kisses; their foreheads pressed against one another’s.

“Meleth nĩn,” he panted the ancient tongue for “my love”.

“Elen nĩn!” she screamed before the convulsions of ecstasy stole all words from her throat, leaving her a quivering, moaning mess. Odyn accelerated the thrusting of his hips. Mĕilì locked her legs tightly about his waist, holding her lover firmly in place. Then with an inartful grunt he released.

In that moment of utter bliss, their deeply connected minds filled with all their memories of prior bliss. They were on a distant alien beach at sunset, back on their troupe’s ship gazing out the window at the wonders of the cosmos, in the back of a monkeigh temple, and a litany of others too long to list.

The Harlequin lovers giggled, smiled, and couldn’t keep their lips off of each other. His hands tenderly stroked the hair out of her face as her fingertips gently caressed his scarred back.

“Ready for round two?” Odyn asked. Mĕilì eagerly bit her lip and enthusiastically nodded her approval. She whelped with pleasure as his lips negotiated the slight curves of her sylvan physique. He negotiated his way lower and lower till his head was between her thighs. Odyn hummed a tuned on his tongue that he knew would flood her mind with every moment of sublime romance that he had sung to her. Whether it be when they were blanketed together on top of that snowy peak or in the afterglow of the first time they made love.

“I’ll spend my infinity loving you.”

Then when that had run its course, he calmly and quietly instructed her to, “turn over.” Mĕilì writhed and yelped with rapturous joy, shouting her lover’s name as he seized hold of her long hair and used it to pull her head back while his other hand firmly pulled her hips into his waist. And this process continued till neither could do anything more than collapse into a heap in each other’s loving embrace as their legs twitched, slowly ceasing their spasms allowing them to be entwined in one another.

There the Harlequin lovers snuggled themselves together in the finest silks and linen they had found in their expansive travels and travails. Mĕilì buried her face into Odyn’s chest and she drifted off to sleep with the most satisfied grin he had ever seen on her face. He heard her chuckle in her sleep as he soon followed suit behind her, closed his eyes, and surrendered to the encroaching void.

The following morning Odyn slowly opened his eyes. A choir of birds filled his ears with their songs as his vision cleared. Then came the screeching of saurian raptors and the cries of a brachiosaur startled by them. The tree their love hut trembled as the ground quaked beneath the mighty stomps of the gargantuan beast.

The wilded woods of Attika were a fascinating place, even to those as well-traveled as Harlequins. Millenia ago, the craftworld Attika ventured into a warp storm to defend an Aeldari Exodite world. During this time, the Attikans forged themselves in battle against the ruinous power, and the forces of Tzeentch in particular. Though they ultimately could not save the Exodite’s world, they were able to save a great deal of their fauna. Now sustainable populations of these dinosaurs run wild and free across the continent sized space ship. The Attikans had even gone so far as to adopt the raptor as their own symbol.

The symphony of the deep woods echoed through his ears. Odyn breathed in deeply and exhaled. There was a weight on his chest. He turned his gaze down to have his blazing red eyes met by the glimmering magenta of his lover’s. Mĕilì smiled affectionately at him as she slid finely sharpened fingernails across his chest. The tender sting of her claws prickling the surface of his skin, made his body come alive with a cold thrill. He loved the sensation, like a cold blade narrowly missing his jugular, and she knew it.

Odyn snuggly wrapped one arm around her waist as he gently stroked the bangs out of her face. Their bare forms laid entwined in with one another that morning. For all the calamity of the cosmos, their lives, this moment was nothing shy of serene bliss.

“Whatch ya’ doing, meleth nĩn?” he asked.

“Watching your dreams,” Mĕilì replied.

“Were you now?”

She smiled coyly and pressed herself tighter into his arms. He read the surface of her thoughts. She was feeling warm, happy, comfortable. Then her mind turned towards something and she became cold and distant in her thoughts. Some great trepidation had crossed her mind.

“Mĕilì, what’s wrong?” Odyn pressed her.

She breathed heavily. Odyn sat up in the bed, leaned forward, and rubbed his hand up and down her back.

“Hey now, don’t ever be afraid to tell me something. What’s on your mind, love?”

“You could read if you wish,” she snapped back.

“Yeah I could, but Cegorach didn’t gift us the splendor of sublime tongue to not use it,” Odyn replied.

“Well…” she paused, her uneasy feelings betrayed her intentions to shift the subject, “…you used yours divinely last night.”

Odyn chuckled, “Have I ever not known what magic words excite your body and extoll your spirit? Come now Mĕilì, talk to me. Tell me what thought troubles you.” Mĕilì closed her eyes, held her breath and the faint warmth radiated from within her cold. She wanted to trust him with this, whatever it was that was plaguing her.

“I’m entering my fertility cycle,” she said.

Odyn’s stomach dropped and his warmth was subsumed in the cold quiet of fear.

“Are you…” he went to ask but trailed off before he could finish the question.

“No,” she replied tersely.

All the dread washed out of his thoughts and an almost giddy joy found home in his feelings. Though as Odyn gathered his feelings, he became cognizant of the small but intense heat rising within Mĕilì. She grimaced as she got up out of the bed, wrapping herself in the silken sheets.

“Mĕilì!” Odyn pleaded as he lunged forward, gently grabbing her arm. He realized his error and desperately sought to undo any harm he may have inflicted upon his love. She shirked away, but as she turned to glare at him, Odyn fully opened his mind to her.

I’m not hiding anything. Talk to me, please. The last thing I’d ever want to do is wound you in any way.

Mĕilì heard his plea and her own frigidness subsided. They sat on the edge of the bed in each other’s arms as the roars, cries, and hums of the deep wood echoed beneath them. Odyn laid his head over Mĕilì’s shoulder as he wrapped her up in a loving embrace. She kissed the side of his face and then they nuzzled their faces against one another’s. With that expression of mutual affection, Mĕilì steeled herself and prepared to speak.

“I’m entering my fertility cycle and I think we should try for an aeldarling of our own.”

Odyn swallowed hard. He could sense how powerfully she wanted this but he also couldn’t mask his own reservations from her. She already knew his disapproval of the notion but he still had to find a means of expressing it in words.

“Mĕilì, is now really the best time?” he asked.

“It’ll be another four to five decades before we could try again,” she replied.

“I know, I know. It’s just…”

“You don’t want to have one with me,” she finished his thoughts.

“Hey!” he snarled as he seized her by the shoulder and forcefully turned her around to face him. He laid his forehead against hers and opened his full mind to her. He projected his thoughts of their life together after the fall of She Who Thirsts. Part of that pleasant pageantry was both a son and a daughter.

I already know their names.

These thoughts of his greatly relieved Mĕilì. She smiled warmly, almost tearing up at the them.

“What are their names?” she asked.

“Revanir and Raegnaerwen,” he answered.

Mĕilì snickered. “My stars, sometimes you try too hard. Why not Odion for the boy and Mĕiel for the girl?” Odyn pondered the thought. He knew exactly what he wanted to say but wasn’t quite certain of how to say it. Just say it.

“Because their names were Revan and Raenyra.”

By all rights that should have made no sense but none-the-less, Mĕilì understood it perfectly. They didn’t know how they knew it, but the both of them knew this was not the first lifetime they had found each other. Their shared dreams of these entwined past lives were more than the synchronicity of a romantically enthralled psychic pairing.

That thought had to be put aside for the moment. This was a question of their present, not their past.

“Do you fear for their souls?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” he snapped, “it is by the wondrous workings of our god, Cegorach, that the Great Enemy will be defeated. Of this fact, my resolve and certainty are unflinching. Do not mistaken me for an ancient doomsinger. That is blasphemy. We will win and our people will be free, including our children…,” he paused, “…it’s just that Rhana Dandra draws near. The curtain on the Final Act has been raised, and we are Harlequin players central in that drama. We are the dancing demon slayers of the Aeldari, the harbingers of hope. You’ve seen that light burning in the eyes of our people. It’s the first time I’ve seen it across the galaxy in my life. How can we walk away from that at this hour?”

Mĕilì carefully considered his words before she spoke, “We don’t have to walk away from our roles on the grand stage. Who better to raise an aeldarling than a pair of Harlequins? They will be brought up in the traditions of Cegorach with our troupe as their family.”

“You’re not wrong my love but I need you to do some cold considering. How well will you do the work of slaying the Ruinous Powers when your attention is demanded elsewhere? Will it distract you so much that it only increases the peril of our obligations, thus leaving our children orphaned? Let’s not deceive ourselves: we are exceptional at what we do precisely because we possess an irreverence for death that is not a compatible quality with child rearing.”

“Yet that peril is all the more reason why we should before we are robbed of opportunity by cruel fate.”

Odyn had no immediate reply nor retort. His opinion remained unyielding and unmoved. He would greatly prefer to wait till after their triumph over the Ruinous Powers but there was no knowing how long that would be. He truly understood his lover’s position but they sat at an impasse. For what it was worth, all feelings of dread and hurt between the two of them had been thoroughly dissipated. There was disagreement but it was far superseded by their trust in and affection for one another.

“We don’t have to decide this today,” Mĕilì began, “just promise me one thing, Odyn. Promise me that you’ll keep an open heart and mind to the thought.”

Odyn tenderly took Mĕilì’s hand and kissed it. “Meleth nĩn, my whole heart is for you and you alone. In this life, all the ones that preceded it, and all the ones that shall follow. You are my infinity and there is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

Mĕilì’s eyes glistened with delight.

“I praise Cegorach for your silvered tongue,” she said.

A fiendish smile cracked across Odyn’s face.

“Shall I give you another occasion to sing his praises?” he whispered with a smoldering gaze into her eyes.

“Yes please,” she playfully minced.

Mĕilì giggled as her lover lunged forward. The intoxicating taste of each other’s lips held them transfixed. Odyn gently pressed Mĕilì against the bed, parting the silken sheets as he rubbed his hand down from her neck, over the gentle hills of her breasts, down her toned stomach, down…

Then a mighty huff filled the room with the foul stench of rotting flesh. Both Odyn and Mĕilì looked to find the massive snout of a towering carnosaur jutting into their shack. It’s blood red scales glistened in the dappled light shining through the tree branches. The fragments of an old kill hung off of the yellowed dagger-sized teeth that hung out of its upper jaw. The black-eyed beast leered at them unblinking.

“Ace!” Odyn shouted.

“Is it time for your walk?” Mĕilì asked it in a sweet, cheerful tone.

The lumbering monster seemed to reply in a low guttural grunt. Odyn cast a side eye glance towards Mĕilì who simply shrugged her shoulders.

“We’ll pick up where we left off later tonight,” Odyn said.

“You’re damn right we will,” Mĕilì said as she leaned in to kiss him.

In a blinding whirl of speed and incomparable grace, the Harlequin lovers dressed one another as the silken sheets of their bedding swirled about them. Dressed in their masque’s signature black bodysuits and white over layers each with their own unique color patterns, the leapt out the window up into the tree branches. The crows cawed as they fluttered away.

From there they sprung onto the head of the carnosaur as it withdrew from the confines of their pile of timber. Odyn slid down one side as Mĕilì cartwheeled down the other side of the formidable beast’s muscular neck and jagged back. They raced to the tip of its tail, where Mĕilì made it first. As she turned about to smugly frame her side-cocked face with open hands, the giant reptile flicked its powerful tail sending them high into the sky. Odyn maintained a tight body control and laser focus as he spun and flipped in such a perfectly timed manner as to land flawlessly with both feet next to one another atop the monster’s head. There he flared his arms out in triumph before withdrawing them slightly to catch the falling Mĕilì. She could have easily landed herself, but Odyn knew she loved having him catch her in his arms. Atop their mighty beast, the Harlequin lovers rode across the biodome’s vast expanse of deep greenery towards civilization.