Night of Revelations - Dark Dance in the Webway: In the Webway, translucent passageways stretched before Yvraine as she and her Bloodbrides darted from one vista of impossible architecture to another. The crimson stranger was close behind, his Incubi in tow. With the daemon invasion ravaging much of Commorragh, Vect would likely have a hundred contingencies put in motion, but would still be sending his agents to retrieve them.The sacrifice of the Corsair ﬂagship had bought them a few critical Terran hours, but that lead would be quickly eroded if their pursuers launched a mounted search party, or used esoteric means to cut them off. They had no option but to head deeper into the Webway.The ribbed tunnels of the Labyrinth Dimension seemed to draw the trespassers onward, lambent pulses of light gliding alongside them with a hypnotic motion. Yvraine's vanguard, barely fifty strong, moved from wide arterial passageways to winding side passages and capillary tunnels that forced them to go in single file. The tunnels were dazzling and confusing to behold; every unnatural angle and rune-sealed door reminded the trespassers that they did not belong there.All too often they felt eyes upon them, something staring intently at their intrusion, but the source they never found. The travellers were conscious that to stray from the relative safety of the arterial passageways into the long-abandoned capillary tunnels was to invite disaster. Donorian Fiends, emotion-eating Medusae, Khymerae predators and nests of Psychneuein infested those forgotten reaches.When the strains of a bizarre, lilting song ﬂoated through the tunnels, its tone mocking and unnatural, Yvraine feared something even worse. Much of the Webway had been shattered by the Fall of the Eldar, blasted apart by the devastating Warp energies that had consumed the Aeldari Empire of old. Those broken spars had been largely destroyed by Commorrite cauterisation raids or sealed off by the rune-portals of the Craftworlders, for most led to the hellish dimension of the Warp.In theory, the arterial passageways around Commorragh were safe, but since the Fall, the galactic labyrinth had been a ruined mockery of its former grandeur. Only the Laughing God Cegorach -- the only one of the original Aeldari pantheon of gods to truly survive the rise of Slaanesh -- knew which parts were whole, and which led to the domain of the Great Enemy.Several of Yvraine's Bloodbrides had begun to age, complaining of the hunger gnawing inside them and testing their blades as they looked slyly at one another. Without the psychic sustenance of suffering, the Drukhari would slowly shrink into themselves until they became "Parched" -- ravening ghouls desperate to feast on emanations of negative emotion.Even the most beautiful Wych would be reduced to a torrid hag over the course of a few empty solar nights. A voice in Yvraine's head laughed at their distress. It was that of a young male, quiet but cruel.The gladiatrix wondered if she had somehow absorbed the soul of the Ghyrebat Hellion she had slain. If so, she had kept the warrior's essence safe from the all-consuming desire of Slaanesh. If she could somehow master that process -- or even teach it to others -- she would have made a miraculous stride forward in the long battle for her species' salvation.It could allay the plight of the Drukhari and their endless soul-hunger, but also the predicament of the Asuryani, too -- should one individual be able to take the soul of another into themselves, he or she could act as a living refuge from She Who Thirsts.The Eldar would no longer need Waystones, nor the limbo of the Infinity Circuits. The more she dwelt on the idea, the more animated she became. Here was possibility; hope, perhaps. She strode purposefully on, possessed of such conviction that her fractious vanguard kept their peace.Further into the misty reaches of the Webway they went, the unsettling song haunting their steps. As the time slid by, the cold and sterile tunnels gave way to utter anarchy of form. Yvraine's ragtag group ventured along spiralling paths that wound around the inside of the tunnels, with the travellers walking on the walls, on ceilings, and on stairs as insubstantial as shadow yet capable of bearing their combined weight.Twisting deltas of passageways opened and narrowed once more, some opaque and humid, others made of crystal so transparent that a cosmos of swirling clouds and distant stars could be seen stretching into the void. The truth of what lay out there, in the twilight between reality and the Warp, was so mindboggling even an Aeldari could not comprehend it.In some places the mind's eye translated the scene into an analogue of the physical galaxy writ in a dizzying profusion of colours and lights. In others, the skyscape was a collage of laughing faces, all blending and ﬂowing one into another to form a grotesque tableau that could forever scar the memory. All the while that strange skirling song haunted their every step.Yvraine had seen enough to know she was irrevocably lost. With no real destination in mind, she had bent her will to avoiding that which lay behind them, rather than that which was ahead. Her Bloodbrides were now openly quarrelling amongst themselves, their incendiary insults regarding each other's intimate practices giving way to spats of posturing and the rattling of blades.Epherea Naptha launched a tirade of invective concerning Vyllia the Talon's ancestry; so imaginative and surreal were Vyllia's counter-claims that even Yvraine found herself wide-eyed with amused surprise. Still, they were running out of time. With the Drukhari desperate to feed, it would not be long before their vicious bickering boiled over into a minor massacre.About them, the walls of the Webway glistened wetly, like the ﬂayed ﬂanks of some living thing. They had come to a dead end. A portal lay at the cul-de-sac's centre, the runes of warding upon its oval circumference smoking as if burned out no more than a matter of solar minutes ago. The skirling song sounded closer than ever, putting Yvraine's nerves on edge. There was no other way forward. She pushed through the shimmering quicksilver of the gate, her Bloodbrides at her heels.A demented scene greeted her, an image from some insane artist's nightmare. A hundred Daemonettes were dancing and frolicking with the corpses of Drukhari in the colours of Vect's own Kabal. The handmaidens of She Who Thirsts waltzed and span as if at a grand ball, each holding a deceased Kabalite in a lover's embrace.They were accompanied by a maddening ﬂautist's duet, the interweaving melodies played on the thigh bones of Aeldari from before the Fall. As they danced, the Daemonettes ﬂayed the ﬂesh from their victims with their razored claws, each gesture a languid caress that left the corpses dripping with gore.At the heart of it all was an elegant dancer holding the masks of tragedy and comedy on a long haft -- the Masque of Slaanesh, told of Yvraine's ﬂight by her besotted Sslyth agent, the veteran Sassarassen.Yvraine's stomach churned, the panicked screaming of the Hellion soul ringing loud in her mind. Outnumbered twice over, she was about to order the retreat when she saw a tall, stately Daemonette amongst the throng dancing ever swifter. Her spiralling pavane was somehow so entrancing Yvraine could not look away. She felt an unsettling peace settle over her, a suffocating blanket of apathy that made her eyelids droop.Around her, Bloodbrides and Incubi were slumping, sitting cross-legged, and lying on the oddly pulsing tunnel ﬂoor as they were taken by the unnatural malaise of slumber that washed over them like a wave. Vyllia the Talon gave a small cry of despair, as plaintive as that of a dying swan, before lying down in a heap. Soon they would all become corpse-puppets at a daemonic revel.Suddenly, with jubilant cries, troupe after troupe of Harlequin warrior-dancers vaulted down from the tunnel's ceiling, tumbling from clouds of glittering mist one after another in sprays of luminescent diamonds. Yvraine felt a jolt of pure energy wake her from her trance.She had hoped that her vanguard's presence would pique the curiosity of Cegorach's warrior-dancers sooner or later, and their intervention could not have been better timed. She raised her Huskblade by way of greeting, then strode forward and took the head from the nearest Daemonette's neck.The dancing doyenne at the heart of the Daemonette horde pirouetted faster, an expression of pure fury on her grotesque face. She sprang at unnatural speed towards the crimson Incubi nearby, her fellow daemons crooning and shrieking in her wake.The mercenary bladesmen, the Bloodbrides, and even some of the Harlequins were caught in the grip of her deathly slumber-curse; even The Visarch had succumbed, holding his head as if in the grip of a raging migraine. Yvraine was already fghting hard against the hissing she-fiends. There was no way she could get past to aid her imperilled allies.As the Masque of Slaanesh dashed over the slumped corpse of an Incubus in the livery of the Kabal of the Black Heart, she found her legs hooked out from under her by the fallen warrior's Klaive. The Incubus rose to his feet, laughing hollowly, his form shimmering as if caught in a heat mirage. He sloughed off the illusion altogether to leave a lithe, hooded Harlequin in his place. A Solitaire, walker of the Path of the Damned.The Masque of Slaanesh gave a cry of disbelief and angst, spinning to slash a claw at the Solitaire's midriff. Her adversary was already moving, punching a monofilament wire into the Masque's neck before cartwheeling away, greatcoat billowing, to land in a sprinter's crouch.A split second later, the Harlequin launched forward like a living missile into the ranks of the Daemonettes. The Solitaire shot from victim to victim so fast that it was impossible to trace him. The blur of his passage left explosions of purple ichor with every new kill.Yvraine and her Bloodbrides, now free of the dancer's spellbinding curse, plunged into the ranks of the angered Daemonettes with blades ﬂashing. The fiendish handmaidens leered at the prospect of fresh meat, and charged to meet them. At first, the forces seemed evenly matched; blood was drawn on both sides.Even Yvraine took a shallow cut across the throat -- it stung like fury, but did not cut deep enough to do real harm. She spoke words of power, and thin tendrils of grey mist seeped from the gladiatrix's wound. Their touch sapped the strength from the Daemonettes nearby and turned their unreal ﬂesh a lifeless grey.Yvraine frowned in consternation, but seeing opportunity, pressed her assault. The fiendish handmaidens found their sadistic joy replaced by panic at the sight of Yvraine's soul magic. The fugitives and their Harlequin allies were now fighting every bit as fast as the lithe, whip-thin daemons -- if not faster. Blood ﬂew, throats were slashed, and slain Daemons dissipated in clouds of sickly pink mist.On the left ﬂank, the Incubi were reaping bloody vengeance with their Klaives; on the right, the illusory glamours of a Harlequin Shadowseer turned Daemonettes upon one another instead of their intended foes. With the Drukhari counterassault on one side and the Harlequins' killing spree on the other, the Slaaneshi trap had been broken.The Masque threw back her head and gave a horrendous scream. The sound was so loud it shattered a section of the Webway wall behind her. A gale of psychic emanations roared into the tunnels, swirling into a tornado that carried the Daemonettes and their queen away and out of sight in the space of a few terrifying moments.The Aeldari fought to keep their footing, embedding their blades and fingernails in the psychoplastic crystal of the tunnel's walls. The Solitaire strode through the gale as if it were no more than a summer breeze, fingers outstretched to draw a complex rune of warding over the breach. With a sigh of relief, the troupe's Shadowseer turned the ebbing gale of energy into a harmless, sparkling mist.Yvraine and her warriors regained their composure slowly, picking themselves up and regrouping. The entire altercation had taken no more than a Terran minute. They had lost several of their number in the fighting, but without the intervention of the Harlequins, they would almost certainly all have died.Yvraine scanned the thinning mist for movement, intending to thank her enigmatic saviours. Only one of them, the Solitaire, could she see. That lone warrior had sensed something potent beyond measure in Yvraine.After a brief exchange with his fellows, he chose to remain as her guide. The others vanished into the depths of the Webway to meet with a living legend, a famed warrior matriarch whose part was yet to be played.