Tales of Aed Elisedd: Chapter 1

For the regular folk of the hive-city of Dax Primaris the day had been like any other; It was pretty shit. It had rained a bit, some hive scum had laid out a corpse of some ganger in front of the Arbites’ office and that caused some ruckus, but other than that the sheer mundaneness got to Aed Elisedd. Sure, it wasn’t a normal day by the standards of the citizens of a more civilised world, but civilisation had taken on a distinctly different nature here on Dax. The Eldar had received payment for his most recent job, helped his business partner move furniture into his new hab-room, and then got into a fist fight with the new neighbours over a racist remark.

Ready for some spontaneity, he decided to treat himself and instead of drinking the evening away at his usual dive, he’d hit the hive big style and go to the biggest club in Primaris; Blacklight Paradise. He slipped on a red jumpsuit and caught the lev-metro down to the party district. Already the UV strobes had lost their initial dazzle but his acute senses were lapping up the sounds and scenery. The frenetic music pounded from every room in the club, and the smell of sweat and smoke filled the air. All manner of people, human and abhuman, were wasting their hard earned credits on watered down drinks, bottom grade pills and hits of the gaseous drug Noxx.

Aed walked past the shisha tents, the stench of artificial aromas and tobacco sticking to his backcombed yellow-white bouffant. Elbowing his way through the dance floor he eavesdropped on a young girl in tattered neon desperately tried to ignore the advances of a man who had, despite his eyepatch and broken teeth, the demeanour of a desperate puppy. As Aed walked through the far door to take a seat at the lounge bar a pair of security guards walked out pulling a comatose man between them. Blood poured from his face and his nose had clearly just been broken. Aed took a seat at the end of the bar, which stretched along one side of the room, padded booths along the other.

“Someone get a bit mouthy?” Aed asked the bartender after ordering a drink.

The bartender replied “Took a canister full of Noxx and then tried to beat an Ogryn in an arm wrestle. He lost, drank his weight in Vika-D and Amasec then tried to bite the Ogryn’s ears off.” Aed glanced over to the other side of the room where a hulking giant of a man sat, his craggy facial features making him look more mountain than man. His ear had a few deep bitemarks pocked with droplets of blood.

After his cocktail was served Aed leaned over the bar, placing then re-placing his elbow so it didn’t rest in a puddle of spilled drinks, and joked to the barman “Gentle bastard, wasn’t he?” “Hardly, did you see the state of the poor scrapper? Nowhere in the hive is gonna take him with a face mashed up like that, not even the dives where the Leddmutts and Nutwheelers piss.” The bartender replied.

Aed actually visited those bars most days of the week, for both business and pleasure. Blacklight Paradise was indeed a step up, but in the eyes of any offworlder the improvement would be intangible, a tepid, stagnant pond compared to a flowing cesspit.

He didn’t want to let on too much about his habits, however. Any one of the high rollers here could be one of the many “business” owners that he’d scammed, cajoled or stolen from, and he didn’t fancing ending his night with fewer limbs than he started with. Isha forbid he should bump into any lowlings of House Delgatti, freshly mourning the loss of one of the Don’s sons. Aed had received four months’ worth of credits to make sure Young Delgatti never woke up from his Noxx high, and despite leaving next to no evidence in the underhive’s furnace, Aed didn’t want to risk any contact.

“Personally I would have shot his balls off without hesitation” Aed replied after shaking off the thought of being buried in rockcrete.

“Forthright.” the bartender commented as he poured Aed another fluorescent concoction.

Aed felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to see a short, bulky abhuman with a thick black beard and shaved head, clad in a loose black vest and vinyleather trousers. “Dirk? You told me you were moving in the rest of your stuff tonight.” Aed exclaimed upon seeing his partner-in-crime. The Ratling seemed to be already hammered, an impressive feat for such a hardy man.

“I went to a few local joints to, to sample the new area, an, an, and well after a few I thought bugger it why not, I’ll take you up on the offer of Paradise after all.” Dirk replied in a slurred tone. Aed noticed the neon girl from earlier clinging onto Dirk’s shoulders, too intoxicated to stand properly, hands wandering all over the place.

“My offer? You shouldn’t have.” Aed said in his best deadpan voice, pointing at the drunk girl. “You romantic midget bastard.”

“Aye, I picked ‘er up on the way to the bar. Well I say picked up, Aeddy, she kinda just clung to me to but I can’t complain” the Ratling explained.

“I’ve seen lesser men try and fail quite a lot tonight” Aed grinned.

He turned back to the bartender, ordered a round of exotic glowing cocktails and moved to a booth. As they sat down he noticed another girl trailing Dirk, a pale thing in a black leotard, almost as far gone as the first girl.

“Another one?” Aed pointed.

“It’s her friend.” Dirk replied with a knowing look.

Dirk Deepson was the most trusted friend Aed had. Together they had eked out a living when Aed had first arrived in the underhive, and they had risen through the muck and blood. By the sweat of their brow they were two of the most reliable clients in Primaris’ underworld. Although not likely to be hired by the lofty crime lords of the Grand Houses, most of the big gangs would have them high on their lists of outside muscle. The Ratling and him were favoured outcasts in a pit of outcasts, and Aed felt a sense of, not exactly achievement, but a sense of something that he never had felt back at his Craftworld birthplace.

The group were joined by another trio of revellers, all with tell-tale dilated pupils. They shared some smalltalk and got onto conversations about hive nightlife, one of the strangers even claiming to have been to the next hive on a drug fuelled party trip. After relaying a story of waking up in Dax Secundus the partygoer went for a Noxx hit and returned a few minutes later after huffing a bit too much, falling asleep in the booth as soon as he sat down. Aed was thinking of calling it a night when a bouncer holding a shock baton wandered over to their table.

“Long ears” he shouted over the music, singling out Aed.

Aed put his hand to his holster, ready for the inevitable racist remark. Not that such insults bothered him, but hateful language was usually a precursor to hateful violence.

Once he had the Eldar’s attention he pointed over his shoulder, “Some other pointy freaks were asking after you.”

Aed looked over and saw in the UV-lit corner booth a group of Eldar were sat, five in total. A woman in a revealing bodysuit and four men, dressed in the same manner. Aed shuffled his way out of the booth and cautiously walked over towards the corner. And he drew closer his heart began to sink as he recognised them as dark kin, Eldar who had continued their hedonistic ways even after the birth of She Who Thirsts. He tried to reassure himself that he was hardly a killjoy himself, but his heart rate still quickened. He risked a glance over his shoulder and felt slightly more at rest seeing Dirk keeping a keen eye on him. Even though Deepson was drunk, it was strengthening to know that his back was covered.

The female stood up and greeted Aed with an outstretched hand, though Aed could not escape the chill when he looked into her eyes. Despite the fact they were kin, he could not see anything of himself reflected in those dark, black orbs. In fact, he didn’t really feel anything was reflected in them, only a blackened pit and empty soul lay behind the alluring and numbing gaze. She spoke with a strange and exotic accent, warm sultry tones of a place unimaginably far from here, peppered by cold, sharp and elegant syllables that stabbed like a beautifully crafted knife.

“Greetings Aed Elisedd, it is such a marvel to see you here in the flesh. And my, what flesh to behold too…” She looked him up and down whilst running her tongue against her teeth, which were selectively filed and sharpened, before looking back dead into his eyes, piercing his being with her stare, “…I am Kalani, Hekatrix of the Serrated Tooth. I am here to give you work.”

Aed tried to break eye contact, and let his eyes wander over the lithe, rounded contours of her body, noticing the occasional tattoo on her pale skin, depicting some predatory sea creature. Every now and again a piercing would embellish her figure, and some sort of bone or tooth was passed artistically through the bridge of her nose. He regarded her with equal parts dread and lust. All he could manage was a stuttered word.

“W-work?” he spat out, nervously eyeing up the room. No one else apart from Dirk was watching the exchange. He tried to keep his hand poised ready to go for his gun. He had never actually talked to any of the dark kin before, but during his years as a Corsair he once had seen a vessel that had been ravaged by them. The tableau of torture bent his mind in the comprehension of what had been done to the undeserving crew. Anyone could have raped every being in Segmentum Solar and still not have deserved that.

“Yes. I want something, you see,” she cruelly ran a finger along Aed’s cheek, drinking in his emotions of anxiety and fear, “something very special. Somewhere on this planet is a Sergeant of the Angels Invictus, a renegade of the Adeptus Astartes. And I want him, you see. In one week exactly I will find you to collect him.”

Taking a step back, Aed tried to look convincing in his scoff, “The Astartes? A Space Marine? Piss off, woman.” He tried to stare her down, but all he saw in her eyes was wanton sadism, a grin that threatened to skin him.

Kalani just giggled as the room began to darken, Aed felt a frosty chill go through the room and hurriedly looked around to see what was happening. The bartender was simply cleaning the bar. The Ogryn sat staring into his drink, still as a mountain. No-one else in the bar seemed to notice the frozen breeze, but Dirk could tell from the body language that something was amiss and left the booth to join him. In the dark corner the UV light seemed to grow even dimmer.

“You think there’s a choice?” Kalani giggled. As Dirk grew closer Aed noticed a sudden movement at their booth, but before he could focus drunken eyes on it Kalani grabbed his shoulder and he instinctively brought his pistol up to where he thought her face would be, but froze as he looked directly into the terrified face of the girl in the black leotard. Her mouth was gagged by a hand wreathed in pure black. Her captor wasn’t a dark kin, but the shadow of one, its features obscured by darkness and frost. Aed had heard of these unnatural mandrakes before, but to see one in the flesh was truly surreal. Kalani stepped out from behind the eldritch figure and produced a curved dagger that looked as though it was carved from bone. Without even looking she pinched the girl’s left eyelid and deftly slit it off, the screams muffled by the mandrake’s grip. Hoarfrost had begun to form around her cheeks and the blood pouring from her eye froze as it ran over them.

“You are not safe in this rat’s den, Aed. We know all about you, and we will know where you will be. A run-in with House Delgatti’s hit men would be paradise compared to what we can do to you if you fail us.” She continued in a gleeful tone, gently rubbing the edge of the blade on her fingertip. The mandrake looked as though it was beginning to crouch, but seconds later its entire form was slipping into the shadows of the floor, pulling its hostage down with it into whatever hellish realm it was going to. The girl’s screams were inaudible against the background thudding of the music. The light began to flood back in as the apparition disappeared.

Kalani licked an incisor and grinned. “One week. Don’t be late, handsome.” Her entourage had already stood up by this point and were making for the door. With impossible grace and finesse she slinked away after them, turning to wink at Aed. He tried to run after her, but his legs felt cold and numb and his feet felt as heavy as lead. By the time he regained feeling in them, Dirk had reached him.

“What did she want? And why is your cheek bleeding?” he asked.

Aed looked stunned for a moment, amazed Dirk was so nonchalant. “Did you not just see what happened here? The girl! And the shadow-thing?!”

Dirk furrowed his brow and cogitated as fast as his drunken brain could go. “What? The Eldar lass? Yeah. She just said a load of stuff, stroked your face and walked off.”

Aed looked gone out at Dirk as well. Was this some dark kin sorcery? He felt his cheek and it was wet. The Wych had drawn blood when he stroked his cheek. Did she administer him some drug with her nails? Had he hallucinated the mandrake and the surgical butchery of the dancer girl’s eye? Looking around the room again he didn’t see anyone acting out of the ordinary. Even the bouncer looked relatively relaxed.

“Yeah…” Aed replied, “Yeah sure. Let’s hit the shisha tents and then go home. I think I need some rest.”

They walked back over to their booth where the two of the three strangers were trying to wake the Noxx huffer whilst the neon girl looked on. Aed scanned the table for the second girl, but she wasn’t there. Once again his heart raced and as he looked down at his cocktail he saw the girl’s eyelid, frozen solid and floating in his drink. Instantly Kalani’s grin flashed in his mind, predatory and frightening. Without another word he grabbed Dirk and purposefully strode towards the door.

“One week Dirk. We have one week to scour the hive and find the Astartes.” He said as they reached the entrance to the club.

“A arse tart-what? Are you alright lad? What the hell was in that cocktail you had?!” Dirk said, puzzled.

“An eyelid.” Aed said. “A fucking eyelid, Dirk.”