Chapter Text
In a time without time, in a space outside of space.
It was a feeble joke to call this vessel a Craftworld. The Masque of Oblivion took shelter in a mangled patchwork of chambers, space-hulk parts snatched from all across the galaxy, leftovers of the ever-hungry Warp. Its assemblage of flotsam would have been a recolliger’s dream. Trainee Idlewild could not help thinking of Footfall Station with its chained-up asteroids and mismatched aesthetics.
Her motley lodgings were far too new and strange for her to call the place a home. The Arebennian described it with far more lyricism than it deserved - but Idlewild was still too nervous around the Masque’s leader to share her critiques out loud.
What a messy excuse for a ship! It contained too many mismatched facets, too many memories of things and people, adventures and griefs best left alone. She missed the unchanging grace of Craftword Crudarach. She even felt nostalgic for the boxy layout of the humans’ bucket ships, their Void stations all laid out in the same basic configuration. At least it had been predictable to walk all those corridors.
The woman once known as Lanaevyss had pitied the dull transience of mon’keigh lives in their square, ugly dwellings. Their lack of freedom, sometimes self-imposed, sometimes a cruel consequence of the systems and circumstances that held them in place. A scion of Asuryan knew better than to remain fixed in place. Yrliet the Ranger had always insisted on her own freedom of choice. Was that not the one upside of being an Outcast - to reject the strictures of her upbringing?
Such freedom was paralysing now, terrifying. To look at her future was to look down from the serrated spires of Commorragh into an abyss of toxic murk.
Sitting in the cliabhan brought her relief from that fear. What a shame that she could not remain there forever. Yrliet - no, she wasn’t truly Yrliet any more, was she? The Nocturne of Oblivion had been very clear about her obligations to his troupe. She would need to take on her new role in the Masque, or she would be left to die in the obscurity of the Webway.
She’d been right to fear him.
But he’d offered her a temporary space to breathe, to attempt the meditation that had eluded her for years, to sit alone with her Truth. Was that not a mercy?
The cliabhan was pleasantly neutral. Its low domed ceiling was braced with struts of wraithbone that appeared to be uniform at first glance, but the former Ranger observed divots and nocks that indicated they had been salvaged from somewhere else and made to fit into place. An apt metaphor for the Masque itself, given all the Harlequins were cast-offs and rebels from some Aeldari lineage or other. Neither Asuryani nor Drukhari influences predominated.
Metal panels in the walls were a familiar greenish-black, like the shells of Janus’s stag beetles, but the builders had carved off all the usual menacing spikes. Limp-looking ferns and lichens sat in terraria that were set into the walls, in backlit hollows that might have once held large simulacra of spirit stones - a common Asuryani affectation, pretending there was a soul in every building. It made the Outcast reach between her collarbones and touch the hollow at the base of her throat, then the unfamiliar flat section of fabric at her chest. She felt no stones there, not any more. The one in her forehead had left a tiny divot behind, the faintest trace of a scar where it had shattered. She couldn’t bear to touch it.
Better to focus on the present.
Yrliet - no, she was Idlewild now, she must try to remember that. Idlewild let her eyelids flutter closed. She allowed her focus to dwell on the movement of her diaphragm and ribcage. She’d been taking shallow breaths from her chest. She could feel a little tension in her shoulders. There was no choice now but to relinquish that defensiveness. There was nothing to do now but breathe. Was that not a relief?
Idlewild had just settled into a stable posture when noises from outside intruded on her consciousness. It was a fight - a rather one-sided exchange, if she was reading the exchange of blows correctly. She identified the meaty sound of a punch connecting with soft tissue - not that Aeldari had much in the way of cushioning. Then the distinct ring of a slap, followed by some tussling. Laughter came next, interspersed with lively profanities in a mocking tone.
Yrliet thought of the fishing trips she had taken with the elantach, the small mon-keigh’s delighted frustration when she hooked a massive spike-nosed beast with a tall dorsal fin and the ensuing sweat and struggle with rod and reel and hooked gaffe. Three Harlequins had ensnared a miscreant and now they were toying with him like a fish on a line.
Yrliet’s shoulder blades hunched up around her ears and she actually hissed to herself. Oh yes, she knew exactly who was having the shit kicked out of him. The swearing in Low Gothic was a giveaway, as was the insufferable familiarity of that vocal timbre. The little dragon - that snake - that supreme annoyance! She’d counted on never seeing his smug face again. Cegorach must be mocking her.
One of the dark metallic wall panels behind her clicked open and began to move on hidden castors. Its usual smooth slide was interrupted with a jolting collision. Yrliet refused to turn and look, remaining in a stiffer version of her usual meditative posture. He’d feel her aggravation, but she would not satisfy him by acknowledging his presence.
A last mocking peal of laughter and the wall panel slung itself shut. Her new room-mate took a few stumbling steps somewhere behind her right shoulder. He paused. He must have seen her, must be getting to grips with the situation. Yrliet let her eyes open slowly, keeping her gaze neutral until he brought his body into view.
The Aeldari formerly known as Marazhai Aezyrraesh, Dracon of the Reaving Tempest had seen far better days. His left eye - the one not tattooed with a pretentious fake scar pattern - was already beginning to swell where someone had landed a solid blow. He always did have a supremely punchable face.
Stars, he looked gaunt. His frailty made Yrliet inhale a quick mouthful, jarring her out of her meditative routine for good. Interruptions didn’t hurt her any more. She couldn’t go that deep into what remained of her soul, could no longer subsume herself in Asuryan’s numbing grace. Even if she had been able to manage a full spiritual immersion in this madhouse of a place, the memory of that feeling no longer comforted her. It made her palms itch.
She must look just as disheveled in his eyes. Yrliet - no, kae-morag, she was Idlewild now, Idlewild! All the trainees were clad in similar patchwork smocks to start with, symbolising the loss of their old identities, until they found their place in the Masque. Her feet were bare. Her hair was loose and unwashed. She looked like what she was - a woman in mourning.
There was some solace in seeing the proud Dracon stripped of all his grisly finery. The too-wide neck of his motley nightgown had become displaced during his scuffle with his Harlequin minders. Now it skewed sideways, exposing a bony left shoulder. Yrliet could spot a fresh scrape there, above a long-healed, oval keloid scar.
It had been a while since he had worn the armour that hooked into his flesh, then.
“Lanaevyss….”
For a moment, his expression remained dazed, as if he was struggling to remember a dream.
“What a singular reunion.”
Ugh, that voice. It lacked the old annoying smugness, but Yrliet still straightened her spine with pre-emptive haughtiness.
“The Despoiler of Dargonus deigns to pay me a visit.”
Marazhai’s hair had come loose in his struggle. He pulled it back from his face, then let his hands drop back onto his knees.
“Spare me the embarrassment of my former titles, for they are irrelevant. The Aezyrraesh name is no more.”
His eyes were grey and sunken in his pale face. Yrliet was looking at a shadow. What was left of Marazhai, now that he had lost his all-consuming pride? She cleared her throat.
“My hosts have named me Idlewild. What do they call you now, my dark cousin?”
Marazhai made a bitter face as he rubbed his jaw. Had the Harlequins struck him there?
“These motley jailors insist on calling me Sonder. I do not even know what the concept means, yet I am supposed to take on this Void-forsaken role they have assigned me. A nonsensical task.”
He snarled in the direction of the wall panel, then let himself sit with his skinny knees in front of him. His patchwork smock bunched around his waist, exposing his withered legs. Trainee Sonder kept his shoulders slumped. His arms reached forward so that his fingers skimmed the parquet floor in front of him. His long fingernails were in a dreadful state - broken and bitten. He’d been using them to lacerate his own thighs - Yrliet saw crusted blood under the nails, and irregular red marks against his flesh.
“I once beheld a sharp-eyed and clever woman take the shot that felled a mighty Yngir. I wonder what happened to her. We are both much reduced in dignity, cousin. I thought you, at least, might have thrived.”
Yrliet’s eyes stung, but she bit back the urge to snap at him. She was not about to satisfy Marazhai with a display of undue emotion.
“I still have my pride, dark one. I have survived worse than this.”
“Ah, pride! Ambition! What banal sensations they are, in the end. I thought my ambition made me exceptional, but it turns out that any pathetic idiot can have aspirations. Do you know how long I clung to my pride, even after I realised the true depth of my failures?”
Yrliet could only blink awkwardly at him, for she had little idea of how much time had passed here in the Webway. He seemed older, but that might just be due to exhaustion.
“I thought I could blithely join any Corsair crew and carve out a place among them. None of the Corsair fleets would take me - I was an exile, my existence was an impediment to their own ambitions. So I smuggled myself back into the Dark City one last time. What did I find there? A spire in ruins, my home in tatters, festooned with the livery of the Black Heart. Nobody remembers me. No-one will even speak my family’s name. I have been a fool, cousin - and so I came here, to join the other fools.”
He balled a fist hard enough to dig his ragged nails into his palm.
“I thought I was at my lowest ebb before I set foot on this vessel. The damned Harlequins found a way to make it worse… they will not even let me feed in the proper way! As if my time in the Void was not harrowing enough, now I face death by starvation. But death is a coward. It has not yet come to claim me.”
There was a word for this predicament. Yrliet leaned forward with one hand on each crossed knee, examining her counterpart.
“You are experiencing a hollowing of the soul. Yet you remain unmolested by She Who Thirsts.”
That would never have happened on the von Valancius flagship. There should be daemons appearing out of the aether to snatch up what remained of Marazhai. A karmic payment for his many sins, and the eventual fate of all Drukhari. The one known as Sonder to his Harlequin recruiters turned his face aside, flinching under Yrliet’s scrutiny.
“Do not burn me with that stare of yours, cousin. So little is left of what once was. I fear you will melt what remains of me.”
“You do not deserve my pity.”
“Thank you. No-one deserves the indignity of being pitied: not you, not I.”
Yrliet tried to recall if he had ever thanked her for anything before.
Marazhai adjusted his smock with a quick tug on its neckline. He still hadn’t bothered to cover up his bare legs, not that much flesh remained for her to look at.
“Better to stare there than at my face, I suppose.” The former Dracon airily waved his right hand, drawing Yrliet’s gaze away from his atrophied thigh. She tried her best to ignore the flush of heat that rose to her face. He really was eminently punchable.
“While we are under the Laughing God’s grace, our souls ought to remain safe. That protection does little to assuage my hunger - or your customary misery, judging by your wretched state.”
“All animals know hunger and violence, dark one. You are a thinking being. You can always choose a proper Path.”
Marazhai sniggered. “Spoken like a well-indoctrinated little Asuryani. And yet here you are. See where your beloved Paths have led you.”
Yrliet bit back the urge to snarl back. She was no beast - not like him.
“At least I found a way to subsist in the Void - even exposed to Sha’eil. I never resorted to butchering the mortals around me like some barbarian.”
“You could always have taught me your techniques, if you wished me to behave otherwise.”
“You would never have learned the patience or the self-awareness for deeper contemplation.” Void take him! Yrliet could feel her anger - her old weakness - rising and inflecting her tone.
“How quick you are to judge me, cousin! Admit it - you were never prepared to give me the chance to disprove you. I was always a beast in your eyes, and nothing in the universe was going to shake you out of your damnable Asuryani prejudice!”
Marazhai slumped over his knees, limply shielding his shins with both arms.
“And now look at what I have become. Scrawny. Wretched. I hope you are pleased with yourself, Lanaevyss.”
“Why in Isha’s name would I be pleased?”
“I am sure it satisfies you to see me truly looking like a beast. A captive animal. I once held you captive, not so long ago. There is… I will not say justice, but a kind of aesthetic symmetry to this reversal in our positions.”
“I might be satisfied if I were not also powerless in this place, Marazhai.”
Yrliet plucked at the sleeve of her smock in demonstration. The former Drukhari’s eyes gleamed for a half-second. Until that point, they had been sunken pits of drab grey. How strange, to see that scintilla of colour flicker before it vanished.
“You always did take refuge in inertia, Yrliet. I thought this arrangement, with its quiet ambience and protective bounds, would soothe you. In fact, when I first saw you here, I wondered if you had asked the Arebennian for shelter from the Masque’s antics. The Harlequins are such a noisy lot.”
He was more perceptive than Yrliet liked. She shifted awkwardly on the cushion she had used for her meditation.
“There is some truth in your words, but I did not choose to stay in this chamber. Grief drove me here. I did not expect I would have company.” Especially such violent and unpleasant company.
Marazhai’s face soured.
“Stop it. I will not hurt you. You have the Arebennian’s word.”
Yrliet raised an eyebrow. “The Arebennian’s word, and not your own?”
“You have both, if you insist upon it. He made the conditions of my training very clear. Thanks to the role he plays in the Masque, he will sense if I make any substantial offering to Sai’lanthresh. And if our host deems that I have upset Cegorach by feeding the Laughing God’s enemy -” Marazhai drew his finger in a line across his throat, from ear to ear.
“Does that mean you cannot behave like a Drukhari while you are here?”
“I am sworn to commit ‘no excess show of force or unearned pride’. Those were the words he made me repeat - though he said them in his usual lilting rhythm, of course. Inflicting agony on others to sustain my own life is no longer an option - he made that rather clear.” A slow blink. “I wonder if he issued you with your own set of instructions.”
There was no irritation in Marazhai’s voice, merely a kind of resignation. Yrliet allowed herself to settle a bit. She could not detect any signs of deception in his voice or his bearing - and they had spent long enough travelling together with the elantach that she trusted in her own observations. Marazhai’s instructions did not keep her completely safe. There was room to find loopholes in his oath. Still, she knew that the Arebennian would be keeping watch.
Marazhai had finally put his thighs away under the skirts of his smock. She watched him clumsily arrange his bony knees - where was his old familiar grace? The former Ranger realised that he was attempting to mirror her posture, crossing his legs with his feet tucked atop his knees.
“Ah - this is less intuitive than it appears.” Asuryan’s Lotus took a measure of practice, it was true. Marazhai’s shuffling was bothersome. He sensed her scrutiny and shot her a dark glare.
“I am hungry and trying to follow your example, woman! You are not making this easier by gawking at me. If I am doing something incorrectly, then say it.”
Yrliet realised she was chewing on the inside of her cheek. He would take forever to settle at this rate, and she would get no peace until he stopped shifting around. Yrliet tilted her hips for a moment to get at the cushion underneath her, then threw it at Marazhai’s head. Even in his underfed state, distracted by his attempts at sitting, he managed to catch it one-handed.
“Hm! Such a deadly projectile…”
“It is a gift, idiot.” Yrliet huffed. “It will take time for you to become used to the posture. Prop this under what remains of your rear end, to support your spine. And you do not have to cross your legs to such an extent. It is more important to be comfortable than to be correct.”
Humbled, the former Drukhari accepted the cushion and awkwardly stuffed it under his seat. A hint of colour crept into his pallid face, but he would not permit Yrliet to look him squarely in the eye and read his reactions in full. After a few attempts, Marazhai ended up in something that resembled decent form - back straight, eyes softly half-closed. He could, at least, now take passably deep breaths.
“Am I doing this properly, cousin?” A single grey eye opened in full to gauge her reaction, winking with just the faintest hint of turquoise - or had she imagined it?
Yrliet allowed herself a tiny scoff.
“If you must ask yourself that, cousin, then you have already missed the point of the meditation.”