Scene 5

Vaxanide

A Harlequin and a Chaos cultist walked into a bar…and all activity therein immediately halted as if caught in a Necron chronofield. Where mere moments before the loud babbling of crotchety decripts, the obtuse whistling and howling of over-stimulated young males, and the inane clattering of dueling piano keys that was theoretically music; now all fell as silent as a tomb world.

“Sheesh! It’s like somebody died in here,” Androssian quipped. Both he and Odyn chuckled sinisterly as their eyes passed over the crowd.

The wide-eyed, unblinking stares of the humans betrayed every panicked and/or disgusted thought flying through their heads. From the old buzzards bracing themselves on the bar top, to the homely attired serving women, to the ring of guardsmen circled around a table with a young woman standing on top of it in an advanced state of undress. Of all the primitive inanities before his eyes, Odyn found himself moderately amused by the latter of which.

Her feeble human mind was an open book to him. His psychic intrusion pierced her mind like a needle does a fine silk. Her name was Christa Virgintine and she was a novitiate of the Adepta Sororitas. Tonight was the last night before she took her vows.

Odyn leered back at her; his scuffed up Cegorach mask held in an unblinking gaze with the aspiring daughter of the corpse-seer. The Harlequin held his hands behind his back as he high stepped towards the table. The gaggle of muscular soldiers parted before him, repulsed as if they were magnets of similar charges. The Harlequin bowed as he extended his hand out to the terrified woman. She looked to the buff military men surrounding her, who said nothing as their eyes frantically darted between one another.

Odyn didn’t need to read their minds to know that none of them had seen combat. One of their number, the tallest with rippling musculature lined with an array of scars, had the resolve to stare cold murder at “the xenos menace”. I’m going to have fun with you.

Anxiously, the fledgling sororitas reached back to Odyn, who began gently humming an ancient monkeigh tune of their long forgotten past as he tenderly clasped her hand.

“Sister Christa,” Odyn sang, “oh the time has come.

And you know that you’re the only one to say okay.

Where you going? What you looking for

You know those boys don’t want to play no more with you.

It’s true.”

Odyn pressed her hand against his mask in a mock kiss, flared his hand up and out as he took his bow to deafening silence. As he strutted to the bar top he picked up a spoon and played the rest of the tune off of the patron’s glasses as he passed by. He could feel the frigid cold of their fear, all save for one spark of intense heat that followed hot on his heels. Come warrior, let us give them a show!

Androssian stumbled his way toward the pianos. He wrapped his shepherd’s cane hook end around one of the pianists’ neck and indelicately pulled him off of his seat and promptly took it for himself. Odyn saddled up to the bar, several stools apart from the buzzards on either side of him. The warrior braced himself with his excessively large arm against the bar top, very intentionally within Odyn’s personal space.

“Xenos,” he snarled, “your kind aren’t welcome here.”

“If you’re going to threaten me then could you at least do it with something a little less…passe?” Odyn snapped back him.

“You fuckin fairies think you’re so clever, but you can’t even understand when you’re being told to leave before it gets ugly for you,” the warrior spat mere inches from Odyn’s face.

“It’s all ‘ooo ooo aww aww’ to me,” he replied.

Odyn flipped through the memories of this angry beast. There were visions of nights in a dark and lonely jungle. Huh, a Catachan. He really is an ape. There were the usual collage of human traumas suffered in this era. Odyn could have used any one of them to cut this beast to his core, but that’s not what he had in mind. Instead, he filtered through his opinions regarding alcoholic beverages. He needed a setup for the punchline. There you are.

Odyn turned his head towards the barkeep. The wispy, wiry fellow with a bushy handlebar mustache and petite waistcoat trembled like a leaf on the wind.

“Maitre d’, some aqua vitae if you would please,” Odyn said. Odyn didn’t need any psychic ability to pick up on how the Catachan bristled at his choice of words. Just as planned.

“What? Didn’t you hear me? I thought you were supposed to be good at hearing, knife-ears. Take your limp wrists and get the fuck out of here before something bad happens to you,” the Catachan snarled.

Odyn paid him no mind, in fact he rather loved it. He couldn’t have played the role any better if I had asked. Then flipped through the barkeep’s mind to make sure they had what he was looking for. They did.

“Could I get a lily-moon delight?” Odyn asked in the fairest tone he could muster. The old buzzards choked back a scoff, the patrons gasped “what” in disbelief, and the Catachan howled with laughter.

“You know what, I take it back,” he bellowed. He pulled out a couple coins and slammed them on the counter. “Sparky!” he shouted at the barkeep, “this fairy’s drink is on me!”

So Sparky mixed together a concoction of rahzod, lemon and lime juice, with a spritz of old-foiz, shook it up and poured it over shaved ice in a martini glass.

“Could I have a cherry?” Odyn asked. Sparky raised his eyebrows. The mood of the room had shifted dramatically from cold terror to the malaise of bafflement. All except the Catachan, who doubled over with laughter.

“We can’t forget the cherry! We wouldn’t want it to be anything less than the fruitiest excuse of a drink I’ve ever seen. Fitting for a fairy.”

As the Catachan laughed all the air out of his lungs, Odyn rolled the cherry on the tip of his index finger. He calculated the distance from his glass to the bar top to the guardsman’s open mouth. The Harlequin rotated his hand, middle finger pulled back by his thumb, to have just the right angle. As the Catachan pounded his fist on the bar, he leaned down with his big gaping maw wide open. Seeing the ideal opening, Odyn didn’t hesitate. He flicked the little red sphere which ricocheted over the hard wood into the guardsman’s throat.

“Gah-gah-uh-waa,” the Catachan gasped for breath. His fellow soldiers sprang to their feet but they were met by the leering mask of a Harlequin, who raised up his finger, wagged “no” at them, and then pointed down. The little monkeighs complied, sitting back down in their seats.

Desperately gasping for breath, the Catachan flailed wildly through the seats and tables that surrounded him. None of his kind dared help him. All the while, Odyn lifted up his mask and sipped his drink out of the martini glass.

The Catachan’s face began turning purple. He doesn’t have long. Odyn gulped down the remainder of the drink, stood up and faced the dying man. With one hand he gently held up the Catachan’s chin. He was very tall…for a human. The top of his head was nearly level with the Aeldar’s nose, but that was the point. This brute had lived his entire life with this idea that his size is what made him strong. Now he was going to die knowing just how small he always was.

He fell to the floor, eyes bloodshot desperately clutching his throat with one hand as the other reached out for his comrades. They would not be coming to his rescue. None of them were warriors, let alone heroes. They were little boys playing at being grown men, and they were not prepared to confront the genuine peril that had walked through their door. Emasculated, disgraced, and forsaken; the “mighty” Catachan warrior choked to death on a tiny cherry. The thought made Odyn laugh.

“My, my, my! Look at the mess your puppet has made, Cegorach,” Androssian mocked his old foe, “Don’t worry. I’ll clean it up.” The wild magic of the warp poured out of his open eye as he smiled. He raised his new staff and a blue bolt manifested from nothing and nowhere, incinerating the corpse down to mere ashes. The Harlequin leapt backwards to avoid the blast. He rotated on his heel to bring himself to face Androssian. “What?” he knowingly asked, “I knew you’d move in time.”

At this, the humans could take no more. They all rushed for the door screaming in cold panic. Well, all except for three old men sitting at the cards table. They gathered in tight, colliding with one another, like fleeing rats clogging up the only escape passage. Eventually one the guardsmen muscled his way through to the door and went to open it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Androssian said with a wry smile. His warning would not be heeded. The guardsman pried open the door only to be immediately seized by a blue sinewy tentacles that pulled him out into the waiting jabbering maw of a chaos spawn demon. The women screamed, the men shouted as they closed the door, and the half-dressed would be sororitas held out her skull pendant, holy symbol of the god-emperor, and began to pray.

“We pray for your guidance and your protection, oh all-mighty god-emperor! May your blessing and miracles shelter us from these abominations! I beseech Saint Alicia Dominica for the strength of her faith and-,” and the Chaos cultist would suffer no more of it.

“Shut up you hypocrite, idiot zealot! It is by grace you shall be spared, but your false emperor has none. The horrors outside abide me. Fortunately for your lot, I’m not yet in the mood to fight. There’s plenty more amusement to be bled out of you,” he said. He looked towards his old foe and smiled sinisterly.

“Taking your crew a while…something must have happened to them.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure Bella’s got them busy with something or other,” Odyn replied.

Androssian’s eyes grew wide, “You knew?”

“C’mon X, we’ve been at this for who knows how many years. We got a few things in common. Chief amongst, we never go anywhere without our girls…unless we got a plan, and yours are only ever half as clever as you imagine them to be.”

“Ouch! Well…aren’t you worried for your precious Mĕilì?” Androssian snickered.

“Always and forever in a more general sense, but she can handle your Bella just fine. What about you? You fretting over your little hex?”

“Don’t be deceived by her short stature. She’s a big girl,” Adnrossian sighed, “Odie, as an agent of the Great Deceiver, I’ve gotten to be a pretty good liar. The funny thing about that is that’s also sharpened my eyes to lies, including those I tell to myself. The truth is that we need our girls more than they need us.”

Odyn sat down at the bar, raised his finger and telepathically instructed Sparky to get him another round.

“You know what X?” Odyn said as the barkeep set the fruity mixed drink along with a bottle of mead. He picked up the bottle and tossed across the room, where Androssian caught it one-handed. Odyn spun around in his seat, mask partially lifted as he sipped the flavorful tonic. “I hate it when you’re right.”

Androssian popped open the cap, chugged down a mighty swig and set the bottle on top of the piano. He shifted his attention towards the guardsmen covering the aspiring sister with his jacket. “Boy,” Androssian said to him, “you’re going about this all wrong.”

“What are you talking about, heretic?” the young man snapped back.

The sorcerer glared at the boy with an unblinking contempt, then he shook his head and started playing an upbeat melody on the piano keys.

“Listen boy,” he sang,

I don't want to see you let a good thing slip away.

You know I don't like watching anybody make the same mistakes I made.

She's a real nice girl and she's always there for you

but a nice girl wouldn't tell you what you should do.

Listen boy, I'm sure that you think you got it all under control.

You don't want somebody telling you the way to stay in someone's soul…”

Odyn stood up, with drink in hand, began to dance along with the music, advancing toward the stage.

“…You're a big boy now and you'll never let her go.

But that's just the kind of thing she ought to know…”

At this juncture, Odyn joined in singing the chorus along with the beady, yellow-eyed demons gazing through the windows. The emotions of the humans were careening between apoplectic terror and horrific confusion.

“…Tell her about it! Tell her everything you feel!

Give her every reason to accept that you're for real.

Tell her about it! Tell her all your crazy dreams!

Let her know you need her. Let her know how much she means.”

“Sister” Christa stared forward in utter disbelief at the display before her. Then the “boy” asked Androssian, “How did you know?” Her head snapped in his direction and Odyn sensed her heart flutter.

“Well, you two just exude a natural chemistry that radiates off you and…I’m a sorcerer of Tzeentch!” Androssian’s roar shook the building as lightning danced outside while his eyes blazed neon blue, “How do you think, dumb shit! I swear, these fuckwits get dumber and dumber each year.”

“C’mon on now,” Odyn interjected, “nobodies and fuckups get sent to Vaxanide.”

“What does that say about us that we both got sent here?”

“Touché. That wasn’t half bad, X. Not half bad.”

“Don’t patronize me, clown.”

The Harlequin shrugged as he sipped on his drink. The pain in his head was almost gone. All this blithely chit-chat wasn’t just for its own sake. Most Aeldari remedy their wounds in periods of deep meditation. The thing about walking the path of the Harlequin is that your whole life more less becomes a moving meditation. Healing was no different.

Yet he was well aware that Androssian was doing the same, bidding his time till his fell magics had repaired him enough. He was running out of time. Though he kept a brave face, a part of him was terrified for Mĕilì. He did truly believe in her but Androssian also had every right to be equally confident in his paramour. Bella Hex was not to be trifled with and the fact that the troupe hadn’t arrived before the demons was troubling.

But you can’t break character. Even when things go awry, the show must go on. Harlequins are supposed to laugh in the face of peril. Allowing his fret and dread to rule him in these moments would be a betrayal of Cegorach himself. That would not do. He was still at centerstage with his great foe. They’re late to their marks but they’ll be there. She’ll be there.

Then Odyn sensed something he almost couldn’t believe. Emanating from Xavier Androssian, a man with nearly peerless spells of protection from psychic intrusion, was a bone-chilling cloud. The fact it had bled through his considerable wards spoke mountains to the power behind his feelings of dread. You’re terrified for her, aren’t you?

Androssian snapped his head back at Odyn, his wide eyes and gritted teeth betrayed the truth of his heart. Whatever these two tricksters could say of each other, they could not deny how powerfully the other loved their woman. Odyn raised his glass to him in a sign of respect. Androssian picked up his bottle and returned the gesture.

Odyn passed his eyes around the saloon. The humans had sought relief from the mortal dread of the current situation. Many had gathered round “Sister” Christa, forming a prayer circle.

“We call upon Saint Katherine to shield our hearts from the trials and tribulations that have befallen us. May she shield our hearts from the corruptions of Chaos. Let our be faith be as hers, unyielding and unflinching now and forever. We say these things the name of the God-Emperor. Amen,” the young woman said.

“Amen,” her flock replied.

The demons patiently waiting outside the windows and doors laughed loudly at their efforts. That cruel laughter was at least partially drowned out by the sounds of woods planks being hammered over the windows. The guardsmen were not idle. They were ripping apart tables and floor boards, hastily erecting what barricades they could. None of it would make any difference once the intermission ended. Like their little prayers, these were the hollow actions that people did to assuage themselves of the savage horrors of reality.

Shame they never learned to laugh at it. Acknowledging the inherent absurdity of horror so elegantly disarms it in a person’s thoughts. Then again, what else should I have expected from the Imperium of Man? These are the people who sincerely pray to the corpse of man who sought to eliminate all religion from the galaxy. If they can’t find the humor in that then perhaps they deserved their misery. In more ways than he could count, these poor humans always seemed to seek out misery. Perhaps the Attikans are right?

There were those who had given into their hedonistic urges once they had resigned themselves to doom. Old codgers jugged liquor by the bottle and the panting and heaving coming down from the second story told his ears of the “good work” that was being done for Slaanesh. Yet in truth, such actions were the last hurrah before the ultimate surrender to Nurgle. The underlying despair of it all disgusted him. Say what you will of the emotional sadomasochism, but at least there’s some perverse sense of joy in it.

Odyn turned his attention back to Androssian and he couldn’t help but smile. It was just too amusing for him to not. The two of them were the champions of the gods of hope, and them merely existing amongst these fools had brough them to the brink of emotional ruin. “Hope” is something that everyone thinks that they want when they conceive of it in its most genteel terms, but real hope was something altogether different. It meant believing in insane things.

For things to get better they have to be able to change. For things to change you have to be willing to lose something. For something big to change you got to risk all that much more. To hold out hope for changing the world one has to be ready to dispense with their understanding of it. Hope is like magic in so many way. In both wonder and peril.

Time was growing long on him. Every minute that passed the exponential threat to Mĕilì’s safety increased. He had to hold out hope for her, which by all rights would be an insane thought to most. Here he was trapped inside a rotten tinderbox with a horde of miserable xenophobes and his rival, a demonic sorcerer. By all logic, his thoughts should be focused on how to kill and how to get out alive. Yet here his thoughts increasingly returned to Mĕilì.

And the funniest thing about it all was the cracked reflection of himself that stared back from the eyes of Androssian. By rights his thoughts should have been centered on how to win this fight. The sorcerer had the upper hand like he never had before. Yet here he was all too eager to kill as much time as possible out of the exact same sense of dread for his woman. All of a sudden, Odyn felt like he had lost the right to judge these human fools for their distractions as he found himself desperately searching for one.

Then his eyes fell upon the card table. A handful of the older fellows were still dealing cards, seemingly unphased by the unfolding frenzy. These were men that Odyn could respect. He tapped Androssian on the shoulder and pointed towards the card table. He looked it over and shrugged.

“Why not.”

So the two rivals sauntered over where a trio of grizzled old men were dealing minor arcana cards of an emperor’s tarot deck.

“Eh hem,” Odyn cleared his throat, “Gentlemen, could you deal in two more?”

“What do you got to wager?” one of the geezers asked.

“How about the lives of everyone in here?” Androssian said.

“That supposed to be a joke?” another buzzard asked.

“No, but that’s what makes it funny,” Odyn answered.

The old man on the far end smiled as he shook his head. They three of them exchanged glances and nodded in turn.

“A’ight. Take a seat boys,” the one on the far end, the one with bushy muttonchops said, “Name of the game is Siege of Terra. Two’s and Harlequins are wild.”

“Thank you. Didn’t catch your name old timer,” Odyn said as he sat down.

“Name’s Fucking Tom. This here is Goddamn Andy and that’s Bullshit Bill,” he introduced his compatriots, “What’s yours xeno?”

“I am Odyn Maitar; troupe master of the Masque of the Last Laugh, the-,”

“He asked for your name, not your resume ya damn fop,” Androssian interjected.

The old men chuckled as Androssian took his seat directly across from Odyn.

“What do we call you, heretic?” Tom continued.

“Xavier will suffice nicely,” Androssian said.

Tom shuffled the deck.

“What brings you boys out to our pile of sticks on this godforsaken rock?”

“Well we just heard all about Vaxaneed hospitality and your wonderful jungles, and I told X that I knew just the perfect place to wet our whistles…and poof! Here we are,” Odyn playfully rambled.

The three codgers stared at the Harlequin listlessly.

“You fucking wit us?” Andy asked. Odyn snickered, “Of course I am! Does anybody come to this shithole of their own accord?”

The table laughed as the prayer circle and guardsmen stared at them incredulously.

“Ya’ll crashdown?” Tom asked.

“Something like that,” Androssian answered, “we were trying to murder each other across the galaxy, as you do, and we just hit our limits as we got here.”

“So we figured we’d take a breather and get back at it in a bit,” Odyn continued.

“That what them uglies outside is for?” Bill asked.

“Eyup. Now we’re just waiting on his crew,” Androssian replied.

“That your troupe, I take it,” Tom said.

“Indeed…and they’re usually not this late to their entrances. We’ll have some rehearsals to work on once we get through this mess.”

Tom dealt the first three cards to the players.

“You know what Tom, in all my travels I don’t think I ever met any humans quite like you three,” Odyn said.

“Look here xeno,” Tom replied, “we been in the Imperial Guard since we was sixteen. We’ve seen every kind of xenos and fought every kind of demon across this galaxy. I ain’t got nothing to prove nobody and I just don’t got the energy to give a shit no more.”

The man wasn’t bluffing. Odyn could see it as irrefutable fact inside his mind as he spoke.

“How’d you all end up on Vaxanide then?”

“Same as you xeno. Same as you. Regiment was mixed together from surviving units. Bill here was Mordian, Andy’s a Necromundan, and I’m a Catachan.”

“Are you now!” Odyn’s voice rose.

Tom reached down, pulled out a signature Catachan hunting knife, and stabbed it into the table. Then he pointed the haggard red bandana tied around his bony arm. Indeed he was Catachan.

“Planetary governor requested some veterans from the Astra Militarum to get his boys into shape. He wanted to find some ‘lost city’ in the deep jungles. There was also this ‘grey death’ monster that kept em’ from finding it. Long story short: we didn’t find any lost city but we certainly found a grey beastie…and the prick ‘assigned’ us to this ‘outpost’ as a thanks.”

“So we settled in. Started new families. Been here a solid three decades now,” Andy chimed in.

Odyn looked back at the scorches on the floor where the younger Catachan soldier had been.

“That boy wasn’t yours, was he?”

“Nah. Just some fresh meat dumb enough to not know he’s been shit-listed. These youngin’s! They don’t get it. The man who goes looking for danger is going to find it and one day it will get him. It gets us all. The real tough bastards, the real ones, they get that you’ll fight plenty only fighting the fights ya need to. A’ight, ante up…”

All the players at the table place their bets. None of them fold. The next set of cards gets handed out.

“…Funny thing bout that, it’s a truth that young dumbs and pampered lords don’t like hearing. But it’s only easy to charge into every opportunity to fight if you don’t what it’s like to be in a real fight.”

Odyn flipped through Tom’s memories of that excursion. It was years of marching large numbers of men through dense jungle and perilous terrain. Nothing compared to what he had come up with on his home world but it was far more than his troops were accustomed to. The planetary governor also badly underestimated the logistical difficulties of the task he assigned. Jungles mean supply train problems and disease. Disease and a lack of supplies adds up to camp fever. A camp of sick men becomes easy prey.

“Reminds me of how people react to a performance. The critics who will judge you the harshest as a performer are the ones who’ve never stepped foot on stage,” Odyn said.

Androssian scoffed.

“Who cares what they think? If you really planned it right, somebody else will be the person in the fight. The universe doesn’t admire warriors. It rewards survivors.”

“You’re not wrong X, but then why are you here?” Odyn asked.

“What?” the sorcerer snapped.

“You heard me. If that’s true then why do you got to be the one to kill me? Why not do your Tzeentchy thing and plot my demise? Why does my death have to be at your hands?”

“Why didn’t you chop my head off when we crashed here? You probably could have. So why didn’t you?”

“It’s for the same reason those demons aren’t busting down these walls to finish me off. You know the meaning behind spectacle. You know the power that comes from it. You’re here at this table waiting for the odds to level out because you know this dance we do means something. And it must have a fitting end.”

“I should have known, you insufferable diva. We can’t do anything lest we have a grand enough ‘stage’ for it.”

“Well yes, but no.”

“Listen Aeldari, if you keep holding up the game with this pretentious shit, I’m going to strangle you,” Bill snipped.

Odyn smiled.

“Fair enough. I’ll cut to the chase. The real reason we’re waiting is because any victory we’d have over each other would be hollow without our better halves to share in it. So tell me what you had Bella do to Mĕilì so we can untie that mess and get out of here.”

Androssian chuckled sinisterly as the fifth and final batch of cards were handed out.

“Oh it’s just a magnificent little spell she concocted to trap the soul in the mind’s eye!” he proclaimed, rising to feet as he curled his hand upward.

“And he calls me a fop…” Odyn whispered to Tom loudly enough for it to be heard by all.

“Shut your face, clown! For you see, it is but an elaborate maze made up of the infinite reflection of the human soul that shimmer as shattered glass-,”

“Brevity is the soul of wit,” Odyn whispered at Androssian.

Warp energy trickled out of his eye as the sorcerer frowned. He slammed his staff downward, sending blue lightning dancing across the floor. The trapped civilians screamed in panicked terror. Nobody at the card table was the least bit phased by the tantrum.

“Boy! Sit your ass down,” Bill chided Androssian, “We get it already. Your girl did the soul-mind spell thing to his woman. Any way you can get to her to stop it so you two can quit whinging about it? It’ll get both your panties’ out of their wads and ya’ll can go back to killing each other. By the way, I’m out,” he said, tossing his cards in.

Odyn leaned hard against the table as he laughed heartily. The old codgers chuckled along as well. Androssian found himself momentarily flummoxed but let it go with a heavy sigh and laughed along at himself.

“Wish I could old-timer but the spell’s beyond my capacity. I couldn’t pull her out of the ‘mind’s eye’ even if I tried. It’s her own little pocket dimension she crafted and your Mĕilì will be the first person she’s allowed in there.”

“I take it these are your first wives. A man is always sweetest on his first,” Tom said.

“Sounds like you’ve had several.”

“Oh, you know how it goes, heretic. Puberty hits and you know you’re going to get shipped out with the tithe. So you find a girl and fuck like rabbits. Every second with her is the sweetest moment of your miserable life. Your number gets called, you board the ship, and you never see her again.”

Tom reached over and took a hefty swig out of his bottle of bourbon.

“Then you survive an ork waaagh, three demon incursions, and a shootout with the Tau before you’re given the chance to resettle the bluies world you conquered. You find a good woman and raise a family with her, but now you’re a vet of multiple battles, so the brass wants you back in the ranks. Can’t tell em’ ‘no’. So you go and you’re gone for years. Then you get the news that some spikey Aeldar bastards overran your home-,”

“Drukhari,” Odyn interjected, “Those weren’t Asuryani. Those were the kabals of the Dark City.”

“Who gives a shit!” Tom snapped, “Are you telling the story or am I?”

Odyn raised his hands up and nodded to acknowledge his fault. It meant the world for an Aeldar who wasn’t Drukhari to not be conflated with them but the Harlequin had traveled enough of the galaxy to understand that to an outsider the differences must seem insulting.

“I hope they weren’t taken alive,” Androssian chimed in.

“Told my second wife the same thing. Everyone who knows anything keeps a poison pill for precisely that occasion,” Tom said as he held up a green vile hung around his neck, “but it turns out that wife didn’t know anything…and as a result my daughter got taken by those slavers…”

Odyn bowed his head, clasped his hands together and said a prayer to Cegorach in the ancient sylvan tongue. There was no worst fate a person could suffer in this galaxy than being taken alive by the Drukhari. Though Tom’s stern face didn’t break, Odyn could sense the crushing wave of sadness washing over him. However brave a face he made, his eyes could not lie as tears welled in their recesses.

“…Then you fight back another three demon incursions with the help of the Emperor’s angels…but then a different kind in red power armor shows up. They got nuts and start eating everyone alive and you learn they weren’t corrupted by demons. That’s just what they do, and as a lowly guardsman you’re just supposed to shut up and take it in stride that God-Emperor’s hand crafted soldiers act exactly the same way the demons do. Then you get shipped off on some shithole were the planetary governor doesn’t know dick about what he’s talking about. You watch your men die of jungle rot till a single ork riding a giant squig kills your entire company. Then for your decades of loyal service, you get dumped on a pile of sticks where you marry a woman who gives you another daughter who gets knocked-up by a boy getting shipped out with the tithe. But she dies in childbirth because you live in the sticks and that’s just how things go.”

Tom took another swig of his bourbon and looked at his hand.

“And just like life, I’ve been given a shit hand,” he said as folded, “But that’s when it hits ya, and I think you of all people could appreciate this, xeno. Every little misery you’ve ever suffered is all in service to a joke. Your misery is a punchline to the universe. And the only way you can get through it is by laughing along with the joke.”

“If we didn’t laugh we’d all go mad,” Odyn replied.

“Heh, and you, heretic,” Tom pointed at Androssian, “I get it. I gave my life in service to a pile of bones that never gave a shit about me. That makes me the butt of the joke. If I wasn’t so damn old when you showed up, I’d listen real intently to your offer if it meant I got to be the one making the jokes as opposed to taking them.”

“Heresy!” “Sister” Christa roared, her teeth chattering with contempt.

Androssian uttered an “ugh” underneath his breath as he rolled his eyes. With a flick of his wrist and snap of his fingers the sorcerer made the aspiring sororitas’ mouth disappear. She crumpled to the floor, clasping at her now non-existent orifice, as her fellow civilians held her down as she writhed. Cold terror radiated off of her and the demons outside howled with laughter at her pain.

“Heeehheehee!” Androssian snickered, “Well…Fucking Tom, today is the first lucky day of your miserable life.”

“Huh?” the old man grunted.

“With the power of the warp, time is merely a suggestion. Believe me, I know the bumbling idiocy of the Imperium all too well,” he extended his hand out and it glowed with a heinous power, “Take the power of Tzeentch and make mockery of those who have ruined you.”

A faint smile crept across Tom’s face. His fragile form teetered forward, his eyes captivated by that wretched light. He was whole-heartedly prepared to accept the deal the sorcerer offered him. Odyn couldn’t blame him, but neither could he abide it unchallenged. Having combed the recesses of his human mind, the Harlequin knew the one offer he would take in lieu of it.

Odyn sprung up and seized Androssian’s hand with the speed of thought. He cupped his hand closed, the fell blue light of demonic magic bled through the gaps in their fingers.

“As much as you have every right to your vengeance against the Imperium, I can’t allow you to do this, Tom.”

“Why not, xeno?” Tom asked.

“Because then I’d have to kill Fucking Tom, and he’s too great a player to remove from the stage.”

“Please!” Androssian snarled, “What can you offer him instead?”

Odyn focused his thoughts and cleared his mind. He kept the image of her in his head as he spoke.

“I can get you your daughter back.”

“What?” Tom exclaimed as he shot up from his seat.

“One of the exceptionally few people who can wander the streets of the Dark City without fear are the Harlequins, and you just so happen to be speaking to one right now. Refuse the Ruinous Powers and I’ll get you your daughter back.”

Odyn started to understand something. Children were the reservoirs of hope for countless people of all species across this galaxy. In the “war for hope” against Tzeentch, he shouldn’t underestimate their importance.

Tom looked at Odyn, then to Androssian, and then back to Odyn. A smile crept over his face.

“Let’s make it a bet. I’ll go with whoever between the two of you has the winning hand. Cards up gents.”

Odyn and Androssian shared a glance. They both quietly accepted the terms. The rest of the crowd had slowly shuffled in behind them. As terrified as they were of their unwelcome visitors, the locals could not deny their compulsion to watch this drama unfold before their eyes. The two rivals smirked at one another, utterly confident in their hands.

“To you I bid adieu, dear X,” Odyn sung as he flipped over his cards, “Full council! Two pair of abbesses and princeps with a Harlequin wild!”

“Damn it!” Androssian roared as he stormed away from the table.

The humans patted Odyn on the back for his apparent victory. He held his chin high, certain of it as well. Though he couldn’t read Androssian’s mind, what else could his reaction signal?

“Come now, heretic. Don’t be a sour sport. Turn up the losing cards,” Andy chided him.

“Oh, I didn’t lose,” Androssian said as he strutted back to the table, “Full council; with two pair of abbesses and princeps with a two wild!”

The whole saloon and the demons outside screeched with frenzied enthusiasm at the dramatic turn. Odyn fell to his knees, eyes transfixed on the cards as Androssian bashed his head against the wall. This can’t be!

In both their heads, the giggling of both Tzeentch and Cegorach could be heard as the joke of their existences was revealed to them, given word by Fucking Tom.

“Hot damn! You two really are a pair, ain’t ya?”

“More like a pair of two pairs,” Androssian snarled.

Odyn stood up, ripped off his mask, and slowly slid his hand over his face.

“We’re at a draw. Clown, how are we going to resolve this?” Androssian asked.

The baffled Harlequin glanced at the dueling pianos. The sorcerer followed his eyes. Then turned his head back with a smirk. Odyn allowed his enemy to read his thoughts. Why not?

So one strutted and the other pranced towards the instruments and took their seats upon the accompanying benches. Odyn cracked his fingers as Androssian cracked his neck. Neither one of them wanted to admit it, but at this point neither could deny one simple truth: they were keeping this farce going because the both of them were just too damned entertained by it to stop.