The Revolt of Shadows:

Vect’s injury by the Wolf King Russ had triggered a great wave of opportunistic attacks by the Archons of his rival Kabals, and even those within the Kabal of the Black Heart; if the High Lord could be made to bleed, then he was not flawless and he could be bested, somehow. This period of excitement was known as the year of a thousand revolts (even though the actual number of revolts directed against Vect was far higher than a mere one thousand).

Every conniving and ambitious eldar in Commorragh seemed to make an attempt at undermining or unseating Vect from power. Vect turned each attempt inside out, causing the death of its conspirators, or turning conspirators against his other enemies, and hence eliminating them both. This year of madness was a great boon to the Commorrites, who greatly enjoyed using their realspace raid soul-bounties to fund epic carnage across the city. Wych tournaments spilled out onto the streets, and into the eyries and spires across the impossible city. Sub-realms cavorted and rose up, as political animals prowled and devoured one another in Machiavellian schemes that would make a mere human politician weep in envy. As this chaos swept up more and more of the populace into its storm reaches, Vect stood at the eye of the storm, a deceptively calm place.

Vect himself, though he would never show it to any living being, was tiring. Millions were dying to feed his black web of a mind. He even began to eat the eyes of seers, the choicest and most nutritious of soul essence available. Even his labyrinthine mind struggled to cope with the myriad plots and conspiracies levelled against him and his allies. Despite this, Vect knew there was some force behind the year of a thousand revolts, a mind comparable to his in cunning and duplicity. There was only one Dark Eldar taht truly fit that description; Lady Aurelia Malys. Her Poisoned Tongue Kabal were pitting the other kabals against Vect, somehow managing to get their archons destroyed in the process. Yet, Malys was not taking over these Kabals, or putting her own puppet Archons in their place. This intrigued Vect most of all, as this seemed to lack ambition. She was forgoing personal power and advancement. Dark Eldar were all sociopathic narcissists at heart, Vect had learnt this over millennia; no matter how noble or deranged they seemed, if given the chance to become one of the inner circle of the powerful, an eldar would always slither into line and play to Vect’s tune. Yet Malys, alone amongst the eldar, did not.

Vect reached a conclusion then that he had long suspected; Lady Malys was not an eldar. Not anymore. As civil war continued to rage, Vect had Malys hunted down. The trackers followed her to a vast hemispherical sanctum, deep within the catacombs clinging to the underside of Commorragh like tumour growths. Soon, as Vect watched through his hunter-puppets’ eyes, the chamber was revealed to be a domed chamber. Every space inch of space on the sloping walls were occupied by perfectly placed skulls. All of the skulls peered inwards, towards a dais. To the left of the dais, Lady Malys herself stood, a smile impossibly wide on her lips. Vect’s kill team wasted no time in opening fire upon the Archon, but she could not be struck. Every crystal splinter, every baleful blast of energy, every razor-edged disk, missed her comfortably. When ranged weapons failed, his mercenaries eagerly leapt into combat with her. Even though her skill was exquisite and her elegant kills were a joy for Vect to view through his vid-steals, his hired killers were masters of their art, and surrounded her with expert precision. If malys had been fighting them alone, she would have perished there.

If.

Suddenly, one by one, the hunters were falling, cut down by something swift and unseen, like fluid shadow. Their heads were taken one by one, clattering with a crunch to the floor, which was covered in shattered skulls. This was Kheradruakh’s lair, ‘He Who Hunts Heads’. The Decapitator.

With a grin on her face, Malys plucked the last hunter’s severed head from the floor, so she could peer into Vect’s eyes vicariously.

“Good evening my love,” she purred sweetly, before she broke down into violent, shuddering laughter.

Vect smiled back, for he knew the creature within could see him too, impossible as it seemed. “I was wondering when we would meet. I would have thought this meeting could have been conducted sooner,” Vect replied. “’My Love’ was a good touch though. Very menacing,” Vect added, mockingly.

“Do not be like that, young master Vect. Have I been such a neglectful landlord? Have I not kept the ravages of the Young Prince from you? Your voice suggests a significant lack of gratitude.”

Vect dismissed the reply with a theatrical gesture. “Gratitude is so tedious. It implies that the gratified owes their patron a favour. I owe you nothing.”

The being within Malys chuckled, the crystal heart in her chest glimmering with multiple hues within her breast. “Oh, the eldar owe me a great many things, but that is not why I lured your men here.”

“Indeed?” Vect responded, raising an eyebrow lazily.

“I lured them here to bear witness. I feel it is only fair the High Lord of my tenants understands why I must punish your species.”

Vect began to lose patience with the shimmering fiend wearing Malys’ flesh. “Do not presume to threaten me. Do not think that being a god will protect you from me, should I choose to... lose my temper with you.”

Malys burst into laughter upon hearing Vect’s threat. “You absurd little parasite! You do amuse me so. But enough of the games I think. Your regime has hamstrung my efforts on the galactic stage. Your creed of self-interest has united your ‘Dark Eldar’ under the banner of disunity. A delightful paradox to be sure, but not one that aids me. You are an unknown quantity; a rogue element, scuppering everyone’s plans with your soul-drinking, raping, pillaging nonsense. I have wars to win, and universes to conquer. I shall give you another chance, Asdrubael Vect, son of Ulthaneshu Vect, to bend the knee to your master, and bring your Kabals into line behind me. The war has started; if we do not act soon, you might miss it.”

It was Vect’s turn to laugh, though his was a dry, hideous thing, devoid of any warmth (if it his voice had ever had warmth in it to begin with, records do not say). “I have no master. I have no equals. I will not be a mere pawn in your great game, Aurelia Malys, host of the crystal heart of Cegorach. My realm is a meritocracy of murder. You shall never tame us.”

“Never say never, my dear. If you will not be tamed, your race with just have to be... caged,” Malys responded with a perverse smile, as she handed the severed head to the Decapitator. The shadow-skinned half-breed carefully peeled the head, before scuttling up to the highest ring of his hemispherical lair. There, he set the skull in the final vacant niche. Then, the webway trembled.

The lights in Vect’s personal chambers began to flicker. Though his chambers were physically many light years from the Decapitator’s lair, deep in lightless Aelindrach, they were linked to that realm, and all sub-realms, via the webway’s eternal strands and tributaries. Vect sneered, disdainful of the building disjunction.

“You intend to breach the webway? Set daemons amongst the alleys and haunted mews of Commorragh? Daemons are nothing to us. We have weathered such things before, Jackal Godhead.”

Malys gave Vect an expression of mock confusion. “Daemons? Oh, there are far worse things than daemons...”

As she said this, she gestured to the dais at the centre of the dome. Something was coalescing at its heart; a coiling, living shade, a yawning chasm of unlight, drinking in what little illumination remained in the chamber. Vect cut off the vid-steal feed, but malys’ laughter echoed long after her image faded.

Vect leaned back in his throne, as his chamber began to darken around him. Through his spider-ribbed windows, he could see the twilight of Commorragh was becoming something else; something darker. The usual screaming and endless shrieking of Commorragh took on a different timbre. They went from a glorious cacophony, to a strangled gasp, as if the entire city had collectively taken a breath, before some deep plunge. Vect ignored his alien bodyguards as they burst into his chamber, breathlessly warning him of the unfolding disaster. He could see it for himself; the tendrils of blackness coiling around mile-high spires, the capering... things which he could not quite make out through the darkness, even with his enhanced eyesight.

Carefully, he formed a steeple with his fingers, and licked his sallow lips and his perfect, needle-sharp teeth. The Long Night had come, it would seem.

“What do we do, my Lord?” a Dracon asked. Vect gestured to one of his Sslyth, who neatly beheaded the simpering whelp. Vect carefully placed one finger to his lips.

“Ssssh... I am thinking,” he responded; as he plucked the unfortunate Dracon’s eyes from his skull one by one.

In his head, he made a promise to Cegorach, a promise he knew the laughing god could hear. Once Vect had freed himself from the Revolt of Shadows, he would enact such terrible vengeance upon Cegorach, poets and sadists across a thousand universes wouldn’t be able to categorise all the new ways he would wring agony from the trickster god.

But for the moment, Vect decided, as he dodged the many-limbed shade-daemon that suddenly leapt from the darkness and dashed his throne to splinters, his city would be a little preoccupied.

Only the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue, and Duke Sliscus’ corsairs, managed to escape the shadows that suddenly enfolded the City of Sins, for they were both outside Commorragh at the moment of the revolt.

Eldar gods images of the Old ones. After they disappeared the eldar still worshipped them, creating Gods in the image of the Old ones but not just the Old ones. The deceiver helped both sides, so it makes sense for him to of wormed his way into the eldar pantheon as the trickster god.