Meanwhile, a pair of large, liquid-black eyes stared at them from across the dance floor. At the foot of the erected dias construction of servitor-controlled organs and brass, mathmatically-precise fingers of atrophied flesh and steel strummed and plucked at elegant and old instruments of lacquered wood and faded gold filigree. In its own way, the obsequious biomech puppetry of these Imperial mon-keigh mirrorerd the flesh-tailoring of the Haemonculi covens, and Khalys allowed a curt, brief smile at the irony; how a race so despised by her kind for their inferiority were at once so useful and capable, in their own brief, industrious manner.<br/>She had chosen the proximity of the bandstand not for its seclusion, but for the noise. The twangy refrains and pompous barks allowed her to disguise her accented High Gothic. Mastering even the relatively complex noble language of the humans had been a simple task for her complex, arrogant Eldar brain, but inflecting the right accent and intonation was yet beyond her. It was akin to a grandmaster duellist re-learning to club an opponent to death with a stone. At least so it was to her self-assured mind. But now she could watch the Brute, the Girl-child and the Noble Corpse parlay, examining their interaction whilst a portion of her mind wandered back to the past hour, an erotic shiver of relish rippling across her flawless, pallid skin as she conjured back the images of how she came to be here.<br/><br/>Scrylo had been the one to tell her of the impending launch gala, some days ago. In the past he had oft provided her with work and contracts on Scintilla, and she had enjoyed the blood bounties up until now. But, diving that these were the last days upon the world, she had murdered the misbegotten ganger, for no simpler reason than one might turn the page of a book, or take a breath; one basic act in a lifetime spaning hundreds of years. It had been with equal simplicity that she had murdered her way into the party procession.<br/>As gaggles of nobles were escorted in burnished golden aircars on to platforms where gilded shuttles and lighters waited to ferry them to the monolithic spacecraft that hung like a dark scar in low-orbit dock, Khalys made her maneuver. The engineered scream of a noble child provided the necessary distraction, and as the fops and high-strung ladies clamoured to see, and burly gun survitors trundled and stomped into a defensive sub-routine, the Dark Eldar Wych stole her target away from her very entourage. Much later, machine-slaves would find young Lady Sindory of Bellefonte draped across a barrel, the skin along her spine artfully slit and peeled open to reveal gleaming white vertibrae. The pain would have been terrible as the poor woman slid into the fatal shock of having her insides exposed to the acrid elements of Scintillan dusk.<br/>Pursuading the shuttle pilot to depart without the customary bodyguards was also simple. No low-born, God-Emporer fearing  man would risk his neck by arguing with the high-born (the natural order of station and class being something these mon-keigh seemed to understand well) and once the necessary docking procedures had completed, and the shuttle alighted in a cavernous docking bay, chameleoline took care of the subtle bio-scan that each party-goer accepted as part of the lavish proceedings.<br/><br/>Khalys returned the pocket of her mind before it became to caught up in cherishing the pain she had caused the child and the noble lady, and leant her focus on the Brute, the Girl-child and the Noble Corpse once again. They had progressed to tales of hunting, and of monstrous serpents.<i>Can she sense the serpent but a few metres from her?</i>Khalys mused, and her mind spat back arrogantly.<i>Of course not!</i>Her slender, almong-shaped eyes faltered, glazed momentarily as the image of the Girl-child's tattoo ink running into a slick of her lifeblood washed across Khalys' senses, and teased at hyper-sensitive nerve endings. Exquisitely-long fingers drew imaginary patterns of ink and blood over bare skin, and before the Dark Eldar quite realised, tapered, dagger-sharp fingernails were transferring that sweet mixture across her own lips.<br/><br/>A nearby cackling of noble hens snapped Khalys back dreamy echoes of imagined lust and pain, and as if to stave off that internal trickery, her mind pushed another thought to the fore:<br/><br/><i>Where was the supposed mistress of this vessel?</i><div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>