An Unknown Number of Years Later
The Webway, Heart of the Black Library
Huuuh...
Yeah, that had definitely been intense.
My long Aeldari ear had nearly been sliced off, and I dared to hope I was no longer a complete amateur when it came to combat.
After all, so many years had passed.
How many? I had no idea.
There were no calendars. The Harlequins couldn't care less. And as for seasons aboard a colossal world-ship drifting through a pocket dimension, that was an even bigger joke.
Personally, I'd stopped counting around the seventh year. Or maybe the seventeenth. I couldn't remember anymore.
Truthfully, I didn't even know how old I was now. Such trivialities simply didn't interest the Harlequins.
The years had slipped by unnoticed.
I experienced time very differently than I had as a human. Compared to my previous life, living as an Aeldari felt like constantly immersing myself in something so fascinating that it devoured entire stretches of time without me noticing it.
It was like opening a good book in the morning or starting a game for what was supposed to be a quick session, only to look up and realize the sun had already set.
Hours vanished in an instant. Such were the strange workings of the Aeldari mind. Training had been much the same, except the hours had quietly become years.
Judging by the fact that I had already entered the stage of refining fundamental combat techniques, at least several decades had passed.
And I had barely noticed.
Then again, it was difficult to notice time passing when someone methodically, patiently, and repeatedly beat the living hell out of you.
Again and again.
Again and again.
And each time, you got back up.
You stood.
You fell.
Then you stood again.
All of it accompanied by endless laughter.
If you couldn't adapt, if you took offense at every joke and every burst of laughter instead of learning to find humor in every situation, even the darkest ones, you would eventually break.
The Harlequins lived by one simple creed:
Laughter prolongs life.
And somehow...
I've adapted.
Training became routine. The laughter became ordinary. More and more often, I found myself laughing alongside them.
"Not terrible anymore." My instructor nodded approvingly.
Jesting Smile.
And no, that wasn't a joke.
That was genuinely his name after undergoing the Rebirth every Harlequin experienced upon completing their training.
The expression on his mask matched it perfectly.
Cegorach and his followers weren't fools, nor did they cultivate secrecy for its own sake. It hadn't taken me long to learn that the ritual forged a direct bond between a Harlequin and Cegorach himself.
In essence, you sold your soul to the Laughing God.
It sounded…questionable.
Then again, considering what awaited the soul of virtually every sentient being in a galaxy inhabited by the Chaos Gods, and considering that every Aeldari had Slaanesh eagerly waiting for them...
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Selling your soul to Cegorach, a surprisingly reasonable god who served as the thread holding together the shattered remnants of Aeldari civilization, seemed infinitely preferable to spending eternity in the embrace of She Who Thirsts.
It was a choice without a choice.
"Well..." I rolled smoothly from the floor and sprang to my feet with an almost dance-like acrobatic motion.
Physics treated Aeldari, and Harlequins especially, with remarkable favoritism.
The greatest race in the galaxy had certain privileges.
"I trained a lot, didn't I?"
"A lot," Jesting Smile immediately agreed, his grinning mask never changing expression. "To be honest, I never expected you to become such an abundant source of laughter for your teachers! Comedy and tragedy! Comedy and tragedy! The harder you trained, the more amusing you became. Though I admit, your persistence exceeded my expectations. After all, there are only two infinite things: the universe and our people's sense of self-importance. Frankly, I'm not entirely convinced about the universe."
"If you said that anywhere else, every Aeldari in existence would try to kill you."
I smirked.
Harlequins never hesitated to mock themselves, their race, or literally anyone else. They laughed at everything.
Absolutely everything
Madmen.
Then again, sane people didn't survive long in this galaxy.
I wanted to live.
Better to live as a lunatic than not live at all, or worse, end up in the embrace of the Hungry Bitch.
"People have wanted to exterminate Harlequins for ages," Jesting Smile said with a carefree shrug. "Without our greatest fool, our god, our entire existence would become an unfunny joke where everyone triesto carve us into props for their pleasures. Personally, I don't find it particularly amusing when someone shoves my severed arm into a reproductive or excretory orifice, as is fashionable these days."
"Ugh. Disgusting." I shuddered.
The fact that he spoke from firsthand experience somehow made it worse.
"Yet ninety-nine percent of our race considers it the height of exquisite pleasure." Spreading his hands dramatically, he chuckled before finally stopping his rhythmic swaying.
"But enough talking. Training resumes."
His attack began before he had finished the second-to-last sentence. Fortunately, after decades of this nonsense, I had become accustomed to it.
Much like school.
Eleven years there.
Six more at university.
Eventually, you adapted.
My hand twisted and caught the Harlequin's spinning kick.
Without hesitation, he shifted his weight and launched another strike from a completely absurd angle.
I released his leg and intercepted the second attack, then a third, then an entire barrage as his hands touched the smooth black floor. As always, his movements resembled an elegant dance, at times they seemed utterly impractical. That illusion lasted only until one realized every motion was lethally efficient. His style was deadly to anything roughly his size.
Space Marines would have trouble dealing with it.
Orks would fare even worse.
Daemons, humans, T’au, it hardly mattered.
"Khh!"
I folded nearly in half to avoid the psychic sword sweeping toward my throat.
The next few moments pushed my body's flexibility to its limits. My bones bent at angles that should have been impossible.
Most importantly, I never stopped moving. Stillness was death in Harlequin combat. Often, you didn't even realize you'd died until afterward.
More than once, I had failed to notice the precise moment a training weapon should have fatally struck me.
Fortunately, instead of death, I received a burst of pain powerful enough to reinforce the lesson.
"Huuuh..."
I exhaled and twisted again, looking less like a warrior and more like someone practicing the most deranged yoga routine imaginable.
I kept moving.
Jumping.
Rolling.
Following impossible trajectories.
Never remaining airborne too long.
All while watching my opponent and desperately squeezing every ounce of processing power from my brain.
His figure blurred before my eyes.
No technology involved.
Just speed.
Up.
Down.
Right.
Left.
Diagonal.
Strikes came from every direction, our psychic swords met with vibrating shrieks. Every section of my sword received impacts. There was hardly a single inch of the weapon that hadn't intercepted one of his attacks. The duel resembled an elaborate dance. At several points, we practically ran along the walls.
Our bodies bent more gracefully than dancers and leapt more nimbly than cats. During the last ten minutes alone, I had performed something resembling an aerial loop at least five times, flipping backward through the air while continuing to parry incoming attacks.
Again and again we collided.
Again and again we separated.
Then attacked once more.
Neither of us retreated into a defensive posture. Even Aeldari understood one universal truth.
The best defense was offense.
One might ask why we were fighting like medieval barbarians instead of using ranged weapons.
The answer was simple.
The Aeldari, especially the Harlequins, understood how rapidly battlefields changed. Many situations existed where a psychic sword proved more effective than any firearm. More importantly, melee weapons forged through psychic technology were uniquely suited to channel Warp energy.
They became something frighteningly close to a lightsaber. Capable of cutting through nearly anything. Achieving similar results with ranged weapons of comparable size and weight was considerably more difficult.
And in the universe of Warhammer, where chainswords existed and Krieg soldiers turned entrenching tools into instruments of murder, abandoning swordsmanship would simply be foolish.