Scene 3

Within the Warp, Where time is meaningless

Odyn and Androssian viciously clawed at one another as their material husks sailed through the limitless immaterium. The realm of thought and magic, the place from whence all sentient thought conjured all the gods and devils, was thoroughly corrupted by the horrors of the Ruinous Powers. Two men locked in mortal strife drifted through the nightmarish reflection of existence. Stars exploded into rapidly propagating cells of ancient beasts that died and their skinned corpses fell onto barren rocks in the unending void, that became the firmament of worlds. Fell ethereal birds cried, their screeches manifesting as music in the beating hearts of a thousand orphaned children, whose shattered souls streaked across the omni-colored expanse like shooting stars that became the sperm that seeded them.

Cackling demons whispered dreams of madness and ruin to Odyn’s mind but he would not falter. The howling morass of the anachronism of a reality perpetually shifting with unending ebb and flow of thought and life could not distract him from his purpose. He had to kill his enemy and live to fight another day.

As he focused in, the firmament codified into a tangible, perceptible space. The undulating cacophony of abstract concepts ripped from his mind coalesced into a tumultuous hellscape of maliceful red fog, unending torrents of arcane lightning racing across the perfectly black sky, the cruel mirror of the universe was dotted with the same myriad stars, but each star was the eye of a leering demon.

Odyn jabbed at the heart of the Chaos sorcerer but his blade disappeared into a fold within space and the tip shot mere inches in front of his face. The sorcerer smiled sinisterly. Both knew that the odds would remain stacked heavily in his favor as long as they remained in the immaterium. The Harlequin went to mentally trigger his webway portal to escape this place but as he did so, Androssian seized the moment of diverted attention and plunged himself into the Aeldar’s mind.

Where do you think you’re going?

He injected Odyn’s thoughts with the pageant of life that started with amoebas and played through the life, death, and evolution of all subsequent species in a matter of seconds. It was an unyielding tide of perpetual and constant change. Change that played its part in the history of everything. The tiniest microfibers in the great cosmic tapestry fate. The incalculable and incomprehensible drama of everything were all but puppet strings to a master leering down from the shadows. It was Tzeentch. Androssian grabbed Odyn’s masked face.

You and your god are nothing before the Changer of Ways!

Odyn could hear the chittering voice of Dread Infinity himself whispering through his mind. “The Black Library,” it said and Odyn’s thoughts instinctively turned to Cegorach’s sanctuary in the webway. His portal fizzed and fired off as his mind centered on that place Tzeentch so eagerly sought to find entrance to. They blipped out the reddish hell of the warp and into the accelerating blue passage of the webway. He knew what this was all about. They’re using my memories to find the way to the Black Library!

Odyn couldn’t allow that. He had to abandon his escape and more pressingly, get them out of his head. The Harlequin let his mind drift to the thousand secluded places he had visited across the galaxy. Still locked onto one another, both men permeated a hundred different places in space and time as Odyn projected his memories into Androssian’s mind. The red of the warp and the blue of the webway spiraled around them as they remained stationary sailing the ethereal currents between the two dimensions. The chattering of Tzeentch in his mind was drowned out by the rising laughter of Cegorach.

“What do you call a man with a plan for everything?” Odyn asked Androssian, “A dilettante…because they’re always too busy with a little of everything to do anything.”

The Lord of Change’s chattering ceased within Odyn’s mind as his servant clenched his teeth with sneering contempt for this slight against his master that he lacked the words to refute.

“Bwahhahahahhahaahaahaaa!” Odyn’s malicious laughter echoed through the void. “Take your bow,” the disembodied voice of Cegorach whispered his approval in his servant’s ear.

Both men were flooding each other’s minds with the images of a thousand memories, locations, and dreams. By this point the thread of “fate” had been thoroughly undone by the sheer cacophony of mental noise. Their minds were at their limits. Neither could sustain this any longer. They had to get out, back into the tangible real space of the materium. Their minds momentarily aligned with their memories of a place they both had been to before.

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The red of the warp vanished and the two of them blipped in and out of the webway, exiting out of it at blistering speeds. Their bodies impacted against the dirt; the force of which broke their grip on one another, sending them skipping across the surface of this world.

Odyn tumbled head over shoulder. In theory he could have used his flip belt to reorient his gravity but his brain was fried from the interdimensional ordeal, and he had no chance at operating its mental controls. His back bounced off the ground, sending him crashing face first through the wooden support beam of a shop’s open-air deck, blacking out.

The fight’s not over. His eyes snapped open and he sprang to his feet. Even though his body could barely stand and his head throbbed so horrendously that he could barely see, the Harlequin stumbled forward…with all the grace and precision of a drunken cat.

A crowd of humans had gathered to see what the commotion was. They gasped and trembled at the sight of him. The fuck you looking at monkeigh?

“Where are you you piece of shit?” he snarled as he searched for Androssian.

His scouring eyes took the lay of the land while he was at it. The buildings were few and primitive and the terrain barren. Far off in the distance his sylvan eyes could see the sprawling green mass of a lush forest. The failing sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, its dying light filtered through the massive cloud of black smog rising out of a distant Imperium industrial center. The image sparked the memory of this place. It was different than he remembered. Then again, it had been several centuries since he was last here.

Get the call out while you can. Odyn knew he was in no condition to fight. His only saving grace was that his enemy was almost certainly in worse shape due to his human physiology. Still, if he found himself outnumbered he might not make it. He needed his troupe. Odyn silenced his mind, opened it to the webway, and shot a single thought through its ether to his companions.

I’m on Vaxanide.

That was all he could manage for now. The searing pain in his head made it too difficult to get out anything more complex. All he could do now was keep his guard up and wait. Then a flash of flight caught his attention.

Odyn was utterly dumbfounded that he didn’t notice Androssian within a stone’s throw of himself. The sorcerer’s eye shined with warp power as he etched a message into the reverse side of an Emperor’s Tarot card with a lit lho-stick. Androssian snapped out of his astropathic trance to himself be startled by the sight of his old foe. Odyn glanced at the smoking barn behind him, where there seemed to be a human sized hole in its roof. Looks like both of us had real rough landings.

Odyn reached for his gun but was too disoriented to aim it. Instead, he haphazardly juggled the weapon till it slipped between his fingers and flew out of his hand into a water fountain in the village square where he heard it fizzle out and die. The Harlequin bent over, buried his face in his hands and started laughing maniacally. Reluctantly, his old nemesis was struck by the same laughing fit. The both of them fell on their asses as their fanatical laughing grew louder and louder. Neither could speak. All they could do was attempt to pantomime their shared absurd experience at each other with their hands.

The townspeople looked on at them with fear and disgust. As they composed themselves, Odyn’s foggy-headedness had severely dissipated. He reminded himself of some of Cegorach’s wisdom, “laughter is good for the soul”. He could now read their thoughts. Words like “filthy xenos” and “vile heretic” commonly raced among their minds. As different as we are, both me and X are similarly reviled by these Imperium twats.

“You wanna finish this?” Odyn asked Androssian.

“Ugh…do we have to?” he shot back.

Odyn shook his head “no”.

“You call your crew as well?”

“Yup.”

Odyn got up, took off his coat, and threw it over his shoulder.

“Eh, we’re at intermission. That’s ten till the curtain rises,” he said.

Androssian smiled. He too stood up, removed his cloak, walked up to a shepherd and pulled the cane out of his hands to replace the staff he had lost in the scuffle. The boy offered no resistance. The sorcerer pointed his new staff at an ill kept wooden building.

“That’s the saloon,” he said, “it’s nothing short of horrible but your only alternative on this shit stain of a rock is grox piss. I vote that we drink until the pain stops or we pass out. Whatever comes first.”

Odyn chuckled, “Very well you ruinous monkeigh. I’ll second your notion. What in the name of the corpse-seer brought you to this place?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Androssian shot back.

“When you’re stalking your prey you kind of have to follow it regardless of where it goes.”

And at that, a Harlequin and a Chaos cultist walked into an Imperium bar…