Battle of Iyanden - The Soul Hunt of Belial IV: The screams in the middle distance were painful to hear. These were not shrieks of agony, but of savage joy, the cries of lunatic killers on the hunt. They were not of mortals, nor even the playthings of the Haemonculi, but of entities borne from the Warp and attracted to the psychic spoor of carnage.Every one of the Ynnari that heard them felt trepidation; these were the daemons of Slaanesh, birthed from the catastrophe that had laid this wretched place low.To fall into their clutches here was to know an eternity of torment, and to be consumed utterly by She Who Thirsts. They told themselves that their souls would be saved from that direst of fates by Yvraine and their fellow Ynnari, but ancestral fear still clutched at their hearts.Darting up to elevated positions, Yvraine's Bloodbride handmaidens peered into the gloom. Through the ivory mists came whole armies of blade-wheeled chariots, striking sparks from the tumbled ruins as they came. In their wake was a tide of sprinting Daemonettes.Realisation broke across the Aeldari like a cold wind -- this was a hunt, and they were the quarry. Yvraine cursed loud and long. The souls she kept safe within her had aided her in finding signs of the ancient Croneswords she sought; one of the artefacts was near, but not likely near enough.Shortly before the Haemonculus ambush was sprung, Yvraine had found a trail of dead Waystones -- the psychocrystal gems known as Isha's Tears. Highly prized as havens from Slaanesh's unquenchable thirst for Aeldari souls, they were formed by the shearing of realspace and the Warp during the Fall.The particular Waystones Yvraine had found did not glitter with psychic potential, like those typically sought out by the Rangers and Wraithknights of the Craftworlds. Instead they exuded a leaden absence of life.Yvraine had followed the trail of dead stones to find it converging with another, then another. It was a sign, a hint that one of the morbid artefacts she sought was close -- though with the daemons of Slaanesh hunting her, there was no time to investigate.It occurred to her that might be precisely why the daemons had chosen this time to strike, though it was just as likely they had waited for the Haemonculi and the Ynnari to bleed each other white before attacking the survivors.With her inherited gyrinx growling at her heels, Yvraine took up her own Cronesword once more and made for the charging daemon host. She was unsurprised to see the Visarch leading the Ynnari from the front, darting through the densest ruins so the chariots of the Slaaneshi could not attack him without dashing themselves to pieces.Their Ulthwé allies were no more than a few Terran kilometres distant -- though they had split off from Yvraine's vanguard in a search pattern in order to find the Cronesword they sought, Eldrad Ulthran had insisted there be a strike force close to the Ynnari at all times in case of ambush.As she saw the daemonic chariots racing pellmell around their ﬂanks, Yvraine's hope that they could reach their Ulthwé allies ebbed away. The Slaaneshi were moving along what had once been the widest boulevards of the Crone World's capital city, bouncing and skidding at breakneck pace as they encircled their prey entirely.With them came Daemonettes riding long-necked, bipedal Steeds of Slaanesh, and freakish, scorpion-tailed Fiends of Slaanesh whose pincers clacked a percussive accompaniment to the chorus of delighted screams.Within solar minutes, the Ynnari were trapped. They had been expertly driven into a dead end, a sinkhole pit before them and Slaaneshi daemons on all sides. Yvraine and her vanguard exchanged doleful glances, preparing for a last stand. As they drew close, they saw the sinkhole before them was no natural well at all, but a vast gullet that pulsed and growled in hunger.The hordes of Daemonettes came within range of the Ynnari's Shuriken Weapons, and a blizzard of razored discs hurtled out. Their slicing kiss only served to drive the Slaaneshi hunters further into an ecstatic frenzy. On the lithe daemons came, hissing and hungry. Bounding lightly through the ruins came the Harlequins of the Masque of the Midnight Sorrow, diving and somersaulting to intercept.They joined in battle with the daemons with such grace and speed the skirmish seemed as if it were choreographed -- the clash between daemon and Harlequin had long been a subject of their dances.Where the Eldar fell in greatest number, there was Yvraine, drawing the souls of the lost into herself even as their bodies died. The ghosts were made visible by the eerie halfreality of the Eye of Terror; to those around her it seemed that Yvraine was physically breathing them in.With each release of deathly energies, the Ynnari around her found themselves inexplicably invigorated. They pressed the attack with such quicksilver speed even the Daemonettes looked sluggish by comparison.As the battle reached a crescendo, a moan of longing came from the throat of every Daemonette, Steed and Fiend of Slaanesh. From the gullet-pit blocking the Eldar's path emerged a vast claw-tipped tongue as large as a human hive city transmotive. Many Ynnari screamed at the sight, fearing She Who Thirsts herself was emerging to gorge upon them, and perhaps they were right.Riding upon this grotesque appendage, their claws hooked into cairn-sized taste buds, were three Greater Daemons of Slaanesh. The largest of them, the incarnation of dark bliss known as the Queen of Suffering, howled with ecstasy as the titanic tongue slashed down, crushing hundreds of Aeldari to death.Flanked by two of its disturbingly alluring kin, the Keeper of Secrets swept a jewel-studded claw through the air, backhanding two leaping Harlequins into the scissoring pincers of its fellows. Their end was swift, at least. Blood glittered like ruby rain as they came bodily apart.From nowhere the Yncarne loomed upward through the mist, its hissing whisper growing to a waterfall's roar. It darted towards the Greater Daemons with blurring swiftness, and grabbed the Queen of Suffering by the throat. The she-Daemon gave a strangled cry of surprise as the Yncarne ripped open her neck in a welter of blood.But in coming within arm's reach, the Avatar of Ynnead had risked much. A jagged pincer caught the Yncarne by the ankle -- then another, and another as the Queen's courtiers closed in. The Yncarne was yanked down and dashed to the ﬂoor. A moment later it was stamped into the saliva-sodden earth by a ﬂurry of cloven hooves.Yvraine gave a cry of anguish. She summoned the energies of her god, a storm of whispers hissing out to consume the Daemonettes around her. They turned to cold grey statues, then fell apart, but there were more to take their place. Nearby, Eldrad Ulthran and Kysaduras were striking at the ﬂanks of one of the Keepers of Secrets, their Witch Weapons ﬂaring as they tore it one grievous wound after another.Harlequins vaulted around them, ﬂip belts keeping them one step ahead. The spectacle was so rich in splendour, so steeped in ancestral hatred, it was all the Harlequins could do not to fall into their ritual roles and reenact their famed performance of the Fall of the Aeldari in reality.Even as she fought for her life, Yvraine had a strong feeling that she had seen this all before. At first, she could not place where; the rescued souls within her did not number any Harlequins, for the Laughing God took them unto himself instead. Then it came to her -- this dance of Harlequin and Slaaneshi daemon was an echo of the Final Act, as portrayed by the Masque of the Midnight Sorrow in the theatres of Commorragh.Inspiration struck Yvraine. She knew this performance well, as she had danced a similar waltz in her youth. She dived, rolled and span, for by recalling the dance forms that had fascinated her as a child, she found she could predict the Harlequin's battle dance all but perfectly -- and therefore that of the Daemonettes that faced them.On she danced, vaulting and somersaulting, following the scatterings of dead Waystones to a nexus of the crystal ovals only a few dozen feet from the Greater Daemons of Slaanesh rampaging through the Ynnari lines.Underfoot, she could feel the pulsing energy of one of the Croneswords they had come to claim, a reservoir of deathly psychic power so strong it had stolen even the potential life from the Waystones nearby. Smiling grimly, she placed both hands upon the ground and cried out.A heartbeat later the Yncarne burst like a phoenix from the ground beneath the Queen of Suffering, reborn in a fountain of ice-blue energies. It held a long and shining Cronesword in both hands, and as it soared into the sky, it cut the daemon queen in half from groin to neck. The deathly energies around it lent it speed; in a blur of purple-white motion, it hacked and slashed at the Greater Daemons until they had discorporated altogether.The weapon wielded by the Avatar of Ynnead was Vilith-zhar, the Sword of Souls, largest and most powerful of the Croneswords. After millennia of slumber, its edge was hungry for the blood of the Aeldari's persecutors. Like a bladed whirlwind, the Yncarne plunged into the Slaaneshi horde. Its every breath was a killing mist, its every thrust the final death of a shrieking daemon.The Yncarne slashed at the giant claw-tongue grasping for it, and the hideous appendage withdrew back into its sinkhole lair as if stung by the great Murekh Wasp itself.Inspired by the Final Act made real, the Harlequins renewed their attack, and within solar minutes, the encircling daemonic horde was in utter disarray. Better still, through the ruins could be seen the colours of Ulthwé. With the trap broken, salvation was at hand.