The Gentlemen's Boutique of Intriguing Antiques.
It was an unassuming name, a somewhat rustic and musky taste of uninteresting relics lingering about it, and certainly too unassuming for anyone but academics and young scholars. Indeed, it occurs to one that this may be exactly why the Arbites and the uninitiated rarely ever even passed the portal of the worn doorway into the interior and, if they did, left quite shortly afterward. Oh if they had only known! Known what lay beyond a series of doors, winding passages, and into the very bowels of a corruption festering beneath their very feet (or over their heads, in the case of those dwelling in filth in the levels below).
If one were to get that far, somehow gaining access to the rather fantastical world that Lucius had just entered, it would be unlikely to be noticed that the layout of the entire, expansive, domain was something just a little different; to see this, one would need to clamber up a towering staircase, or gain wings to fly. If by some magic or leverage they did gain a birds eye view of the Boutiques most secret of sanctums, then it would all become rather obvious! What would become obvious? Well, the fact that the whole place was assembled in imitation of the eight-pointed star of Chaos, each 'section' dedicated to each of the Gods - or more precisely 'two points' worth of room - the fighting pit placed dead centre and the other areas dotted about it.
There was a simple reason for this, and the reason was that the various followers of the Dark Gods were not known for being on the best of terms with one another, a sad and sorry state of affairs, but one that had existed since the birth of Slaanesh had made them four rather than three. Something the Blood God in his eternal rage and infernal fury had never forgotten nor forgiven.
Such thoughts were what gripped the mind of Atella, lounging like a feline upon one of many soft and luxuriant couches provided for the decadent worshipers of her patron deity, the dynamic between the Dark Prince and the ever-violent Khorne being the very reason she was even on Ephron V in the first place. Perhaps not the exact reason, but assuredly a byproduct of the course which her life had thus far ran.
She remembered her past life with varying degrees of clarity; sometimes she was living among the nomadic tribe that had once been 'her people' - part of a confederation of Khornate tribes on the backwater planet of her first birth - and could remember how, when she was born, there had been those that wished to see her dead at once. Atella had been born without the typical look of her people, where they were broad and firm, she was smaller and more lithe, and as she grew it became clearer that there was something disturbing about her; although carrying the organs of a male she produced no hair upon her - or his - body, not on the face or the arms or the genitals, and neither did she grow tall and strong, but developed into a person that others of the tribe feared and lusted after in equal measure. Eventually, not to her great disappointment it must be said, she was cast out and banished.
So began her journey into a wider universe and a development of faith in Slaanesh and his power.
The Dark Prince may well have had a hand in her birth, and one had simply to look at her to believe it; not short but not tall, slender but with wiry and visible muscles, the lean musculature of an athlete or a martial artist...or a stripper, and a face that was both male and female but not either at all - full lips and high cheekbones that were distinctly feminine, but with a more squared jawline and a dimpled chin applicable to a male, glacial blue eyes looking out from beneath arched eyebrows and set on either side of a pointed nose.
All-in-all there was nothing that really set her (for she had chosen that pronoun over any other) apart from any other personage of comparable looks...and yet anyone who had been in her company was struck by a feeling that they couldn't explain, by thoughts and fantasies of desire, as if ensnared and prompted on by an invisible force.
"Mistress," hissed a cowled man, stooping into a low bow before the stripper who was rather more than a stripper, catching only a glimpse of her form veiled and covered in many layers of whispering silks, "it seems that there is a newcomer here who may be of interest to you."
Atella followed the quivering finger until her eyes caught sight of a...man? No, not a man, at least not some common-place baffoon who had just walked in from the street. Here was something, someone else. Something interesting.
"Very well," she said, her voice barely more than a seductive sigh, "take me to him, Raoul, and introduce me. Just try not to let anyone touch me."
Candy Cane Elf
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