The Masque of Vyle Read Free

mercilessly. The mutants had already been disoriented by Cylia’s hallucinogen and confused by Lo’tos’s powers, yet even through their insanity the appearance of a bloody deathdealer in their midst was too much for them. The survivors broke and tried to flee, scrambling up walls and slithering towards doorways in the low gravity.
    There was to be no escape for them. Hradhiri Ra turned his cannon onto those closest to the exits and more fountains of scarlet exploded before the disintegrating mass of serpentine creatures. The swaying crowd of mutants were driven back and forth, gibbering wildly in their terror. The Death Jester pushed in closer. Round after round from his cannon tore into the mass and produced a cacophony of dying shrieks. But Hradhiri Ra had come too close. Perhaps by chance or perhaps from a clarity born of desperation, the last few mutants turned on the Death Jester in an effort to drag down their nemesis.
    Hradhiri Ra found himself suddenly attacked from all sides and unable to use his cannon to best effect. Ashanthourus, Cylia and Lo’tos instantly leapt to his aid but it was already too late. The Death Jester disappeared entirely beneath the mass of writhing, coiling bodies. Claws flashed and fangs gnashed before bright crimson spurted in an obscene climax. Ashanthourus uttered a curse and was about to wade into the mob when they were rent asunder by another bloody explosion in their midst. Bone and viscera sprayed through the closely packed bodies like shrapnel, tearing them apart.
    ‘Hradhiri!’ Cylia shouted in disbelief at the expanding cloud of blood mist. Within it nothing moved.
    Lo’tos looked to one side and began to slowly applaud. The flat cadence of his gloved hands clapping was the only sound for a moment. Ashanthourus and Cylia gazed at the Master Mime, their masks tilted incredulously at his response to the death of a comrade. Lo’tos gestured apologetically.
    ‘I’d expected a better response from you,’ whispered Hradhiri Ra from behind them. ‘Are my death-defying feats now to be met with horror every time they occur?’
    They looked and saw the Death Jester emerging from the shadows. He strode jauntily past the astonished High Avatar and Shadowseer into the mound of serpentine corpses left by the last of the mutants. He retrieved his cannon from the bloody crater in the centre and shook the gore from it.
    ‘How did you escape them?’ Ashanthourus asked.
    Hradhiri Ra nonchalantly rested the butt of his cannon on one hip. ‘The secrets of the daring escape are for the margroach to know and his audience to guess at,’ he whispered dryly.
    ‘So many and yet so few,’ said Cylia as she looked over the dead. ‘Even a craftworld as small as this would be home to many thousands of souls, but I sense no one left now that these have departed.’
    ‘Been shuffled off their mortal coils,’ Hradhiri Ra quipped sardonically, earning him a sharp look from Ashanthourus as Lo’tos made a small retching sound by way of response.
    At last the leaders of the troupe came to a broad avenue which climbed in sweeping curves to a wide archway. Impressive gates had once guarded the area beyond the arch from intrusion but now they lay shattered on the steps like a drift of fallen leaves.
    Lo’tos crouched to examine the shards and stirred the blackened splinters with one long-fingered hand. He picked up a piece and crumbled it between two fingers. His implication was clear: whatever violence had struck the gate had been entropic in origin, an attack that struck at the very bindings between particles and rendered the fundamental material strength of their structure no more durable than rotting wood.
    High technology had destroyed the gate, more proof if any were needed that only eldar or their most dreadful enemies from the time of legends could have breached this innermost sanctum.
    Beyond the arch lay the craftworld’s dome of crystal seers.The psychically conductive wraithbone of the