@dustraised | Closed Starter | Six
Yrliet's face lost color. Amid the shifting forms of neverborn's weaving and cutting with blades of bone and satin flesh, a silhouette lingered in the drama of bloodshed. Its face was demure, impassive, and passionless; a pallid mask of wraithbone with horns adorned. Arebennian. Yrliet's breath shakes, imperceptibly. Or at least, it would have been had the listener been any but of the militarum's scions.
A Scion could raise a hellgun, acquire a target, and loose a killing shot in less than a heartbeat. Fractions of a second, even less than, was the reaction time it would've taken for them to shift their aim and pull the trigger in a single motion. And it was too slow. Impossibly, agonizingly slow.
Moving into a lockstep in the time it took to the eyes to find the performer, hands graced the unsightly form of the neverborn in a passionless, sensual caress. Marigold diamonds and midnight blue unfurled against the daemon's pallid form as graceful hands settled upon its shoulders with all the intimacy of a divorced lover inviting the opening measure of a dance. The daemon's laughter rose into a crescendo of ecstasy and agony alike as monofilament waltzed through immortal flesh. Bone surrendered before skin remembered to part, its impossible anatomy dissolving into ruin beneath strands too fine for mortal sight. Flesh collapsed into crimson vapor and glistening ribbons, each hidden filament conducting the creature's body apart with exquisite precision as the performer guided the unraveling daemon to the floor through a graceful dip, lowering their partner with all the tenderness of a tragedy's betrothed unwilling to rush the final measure.
Ichor blossomed across the porcelain mask, the Harlequin turning upon a single measured step and gliding beside another daemon as though drawn onward by music no other soul could hear. One hand found its shoulder, the other its waist, and with effortless poise the creature was gathered into the embrace of a final dance. Their movements possessed the impossible elegance of a courtly masque, every measured turn carrying the certainty of an ending rehearsed as the daemon was leaned unwillingly into the motion.
A voice, demure with a patronizing mirth, carrried itself effortlessly between the crack of hellguns and the ecstatic shrieks of dying daemons.
‴ Fair rose of beauty, gentle grace divine,
What sorrow fills my breast, that thou shouldst find thy way to such a stage,
A cursed player's shrine. ‴
The performer inclined their head just as the daemon simply came apart, their poisonous, wrist-mounted kiss reducing immortal flesh to drifting ribbons that scattered through the blood-soaked air like discarded costume silks. The performer held the creature upright until the last of its form abandoned itself, then released it with the delicate courtesy of a dancer surrendering their partner at the close of the final act.
‴ This mountebank player of the laughing god's troop,
This herald of Thirst's final scene,
The bane to feeling's frantic band,
Flee, my loves!
Fly! Fly! Back to thy wretched coop. ‴
Laughter. It rang through the chamber with infectious warmth, untouched by the ruin surrounding it, its sound delighted mirth upon a stage of gore without expression, its merriment divorced from humanity, echoing across the blood-soaked theatre until the Aeldari exile's word was translated into the Lord Captain's ear.
amandla
discoholicmusic
dailybridgerton
