With a mask that practically radiated smug amusement, Killing Mockery continued launching thrust after thrust at the BDSM-masked face of the horned goat-like alien, now thoroughly deprived of his horns. Her blade sought his eyes and exposed throat again and again, forcing him backward on his cloven hooves.
The creature survived only because he wielded two swords and because I couldn't possibly hold back several hundred of his followers by myself.
They constantly got in each other's way, colliding, stumbling, and trampling one another beneath their hooves. Their feet were far smaller and less stable than those of humans or Aeldari. Even so, not all of them were fooled by my holo-suit. It was operating at nearly maximum output, flooding the battlefield with elaborate illusions that pushed its systems to the brink of overheating. Because of that, Killing Mockery was occasionally forced to divert her attention from the cult leader and eliminate lesser nuisances attempting to protect their master.
Those nuisances, incidentally, were incredibly stupid.
Unfortunately, they were also Hedonite sadists and masochists.
Pain meant nothing to them.
Fear meant nothing to them.
And since none of them possessed psychic abilities, the Laughing God's Eye hanging beneath my clothing had almost no effect on them compared to what it did against actual Daemonettes.
"Bloody masochists..."
I snorted in annoyance as the Harlequin's Kiss brushed another cultist. Without even bothering to watch the monomolecular filament unravel him from the inside, I kicked off the shoulder of a nearby worshipper and launched myself into the air.
The dathedi, my holo-suit, performed flawlessly. A nightmare of shifting colors and impossible images erupted around me, swallowing my true position within a kaleidoscope of visual chaos. Chuckling to myself, I watched another volley of spears miss me entirely.
Still spinning through the air, I fired several deliberately inaccurate shots.
The effect was immediate.
Enemies recoiled from comrades who were either vaporized outright or left horribly wounded by the fusion blasts. The resulting confusion only deepened the disorder already consuming their ranks. They still weren't afraid, but they were beginning to understand one important fact.
A fusion pistol offered neither pain nor pleasure.
Only death.
And unlike daemons, they wouldn't be reborn in the Immaterium afterward.
"Varrug! Allussa! Darobodo arkami aharste!"
The goat-horned aliens screamed something in their own language, but I paid little attention to their frantic shrieking. Instead, I continued spreading chaos throughout their formation.
There was no need to chase every convenient target.
Patience favored us.
Time was entirely on our side.
It took something on the level of an Adeptus Custodes or an exceptionally powerful Space Marine Captain to genuinely exhaust a Harlequin.
A mob of homeless daemon-worshippers wasn't even remotely close to qualifying.
"Eeeldaaaar!"
The enemy leader finally roared in mangled, barely recognizable Aeldari.
"I shall bring your soul to the Prince of Pleasure!"
Warp energy erupted around him as a vast crescent of pink power swept toward Killing Mockery. For the briefest instant, it appeared as though my partner had been cut cleanly in half.
Then her body dissolved into overlapping streams of color.
Nothing more than another holo-suit illusion.
The real Harlequin was already moving, so quickly that even my enhanced Aeldari vision barely caught the motion. Her blade plunged to the hilt into the creature's eye socket and directly into its brain.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn't a daemon.
There would be no miraculous survival.
Just a cultist.
A cultist whom some greater daemon had likely dispatched against our vessel after sensing two living souls aboard and assuming we would be easy prey. Instead of frightened refugees, however, they had found two servants of Cegorach.
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A simple enemy mistake.
A properly exploited opportunity.
No heroic struggle required.
Once their leader fell, the battle ceased to be a battle at all.
Against two fully unleashed Harlequins acting in perfect coordination, the remaining cultists never stood a chance.
As we had practiced through a hundred sparring matches, we moved as one. Positions shifted. Responsibilities changed. Every movement complemented the other's without hesitation.
Killing Mockery focused entirely on carving through the goat-horned cultists with ruthless efficiency. She never needed to worry about attacks coming from her blind side.
Harlequins technically had blind spots.
They were simply absurdly small.
And I covered them perfectly.
The superior reach of my fusion pistol made sure of that.
"Pew-pew!"
I deliberately made the childish sound effect as the final fleeing cultist collapsed, a smoking hole replacing most of his head.
Unlike the toy pistol in my left hand...
The one in my right was very real.
"Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful..."
Smiling contentedly, I surveyed the hundreds of corpses surrounding us.
Not even winded.
For a fleeting moment, pride threatened to creep into my thoughts.
Then I remembered the sorts of enemies Harlequins were actually meant to fight.
The pride vanished instantly.
Before I could dwell on that realization, a message appeared across the thin crystal display inside my mask.
I focused on it.
One sentence.
One very important sentence.
[About that date, Knowing Jester... I accept.]
"Do you think I should start jumping around like a hundred-year-old Aeldari who just got his first date, or should I simply nod stoically and pretend to be mature about it?"
Thoughtfully, I stroked my chin.
Killing Mockery's eyes curved with unmistakable amusement.
Then she raised two fingers.
I responded with a solemn nod.
A promise was a promise.
Then another thought struck me.
"All jokes aside... who's going to clean up this mess?"
I looked around the battlefield.
Hundreds of corpses.
Soon they would begin to smell.
Leaving everything here until we reached the Black Library would practically serve as a beacon leading daemons straight to it.
Killing Mockery slowly surveyed the battlefield, carefully evaluating the sheer amount of work involved.
A moment later, she removed her mask, put on an adorably innocent expression, and pointed directly at me.
"Women..."
Still...
She really was adorable.
With a heavy sigh, I accepted my fate.
"You owe me a second date, Killing Mockery..."
...
The Heart of the Black Library
Some Time Later
The artifact obtained from Trazyn was delivered into the hands of Harlequins far above my station, individuals who undoubtedly understood far more about the grand design unfolding around us.
Cegorach never revealed all of his plans.
Unlike Tzeentch, however, he didn't keep secrets merely for the sake of being mysterious.
He practiced simple operational security.
The Laughing God had no intention of allowing even the smallest unnecessary fragment of information to fall into the hands of the Changer of Ways.
Keeping us ignorant wasn't a joke.
It was survival.
In the Warhammer galaxy, trust between superiors and subordinates wasn't exactly encouraged, even among gods and their followers.
The finest example was the beloved... ugh, Bronislaw Czevak, did you ever stop to think how strange that title sounds?
The Emperor himself.
"Theater..."
I tapped my chin thoughtfully.
"We need the best one available. Ours is too familiar."
Killing Mockery watched me with quiet curiosity.
"That's it!"
I slapped a fist into my palm as a memory surfaced.
Where had theater first appeared among humans?
Ancient Greece.
Unfortunately, I had certain reservations about Olympia, the homeworld of Perturabo and birthplace of one particularly bitter future Primarch.
So another option immediately presented itself.
Who best represented Greco-Roman culture in this universe?
The Ultramarines.
Or rather...
The people of Macragge.
The homeworld of Roboute Guilliman.
By the standards of this universe, he was arguably the most reasonable Primarch ever created.
That alone made Macragge excellent advertising.
"I've found a place."
I turned toward the Aeldari woman, who had chosen not to wear her mask.
The masks were excellent at expressing emotion, but their theatrical exaggeration could never quite compete with genuine facial expressions.
Her real face was far more pleasant to look at.
Truthfully, it barely differed from a human's.
Much of the supposed alienness perceived by future Imperials stemmed from the austere lifestyle and ascetic habits of the Craftworld Aeldari rather than any major biological distinction.
Xenobiology was funny like that.
"There is a world belonging to those humans, the mon-keigh Trazyn mentioned. Among all the younger races, they resemble us the most. And considering even the Great Fool himself found them interesting, they seem like the best choice."
I smiled.
"What do you think?"