Bahlzair was not a gentle creature.
He wordlessly got up, strode toward me, and snatched me up by the hair. I didn't have enough physical strength yet to fight back, which he either knew before he grabbed me, or quickly discovered after he had. He stood and waited until I could manage to hold myself up, then looked toward to the wall against which he'd been previously sitting and waved a scarred hand at it. It suddenly filled with the huge image of a bustling, open air city at the top of a mountain. It was a lively place with marketplaces, libraries, schools- not just one of each, but many, scattered over the entire mountaintop. Below this city was a maze of caverns, filled with creatures that the images did not clearly portray.
I didn't ask any questions about them, since it seemed that they were unimportant to the epic tale.
After a few moments, the skies above the city filled with dragons, which attacked the place so thoroughly that the entire place collapsed into the caverns below it. The inhabitants of the city- all winged elves like Uirrigan- certainly mobilized to fight back, but were found wanting, and sent word to their allies to beg for aid. Despite the fact that many Elven settlements were contacted, only a few Eladrin ones responded. Proving themselves strong magic wielders, they went to war alongside the Avariels, and repelled the dragons' attacks- there was no real victory, but there did come a point at which dragons left the Avariel remnant alone.
The skies were cleared of dragons, but the Avariels were literally buried in their city. The Eladrin made no move to unearth their relatives' mountaintop home, deciding to force them to turn over all that remained of their vast wealth of amassed knowledge and goods. Over time, the betrayed and entrapped Avariels began to die, mostly due to various types of suicide.
Uirrigan was the last Avariel of the settlement, the only remaining flicker of the once-populous city that had prospered for centuries before. And of all the Eladrin that had once patrolled this dark and winding tomb, only Syjen and Ylyssa remained to make sure that he was properly forced to do whatsoever the Eladrin community required. They trapped the last Avariel into his study with a far more powerful ward than they used to pen Bahlzair in, but to little avail. He had refused to share more than scraps of his alchemic knowledge, and would not brew poisons from the first day that the Avariel populace found themselves under Eladrin dominion, no matter what treatment he suffered.
Bahlzair, when he first arrived, supplied the pair's lack of poison, but viciously attacked anyone who entered the room to check on him. Syjen, for some odd reason, vowed to leave the Drow in peace, but Ylyssa would not. Using Aleksei as a shield, she visited Bahlzair much more often than he appreciated. After a while, Bahlzair allowed Aleksei and Ylyssa to enter without a fight, and more lately, Ylyssa had cautiously begun to visit him on her own. Syjen, bound by his vow, never followed her past the entryway. In Bahlzair's opinion, Silveredge was being forced to share space with him because both Uirrigan and Ylyssa were aware that Syjen would not be able to get at her whenever he wanted.
Has Ylyssa ever caught Syjen cheating on her before? I wondered to myself. Even if Uirrigan is her captive- which seems... pretty ridiculous... he still poked fun at her about what Syjen really means to do with Silveredge. And Syjen stood there and watched her get angry. Just watched her.
As you can probably imagine, the picture book history lesson took hours for Bahlzair to relay, including how he came by all this information- again, the product of some strange feelings on Syjen's part. Near the end, the images became a little blurry, and when they stopped completely, I turned to look at him. His crimson red eyes were closed, possibly from all the effort the images took, and he seemed tired.
"Do you really not ever sleep?" I asked aloud as I mulled over Aleksei's description of him. My mouth was difficult to move, and the words came out with elongated vowels and messy consonants, as though I were sopping drunk. Immediately after I spoke, I felt a familiar cloak-like sensation, and I turned to look at Silveredge, who was still curled up on her side. Feeling suspicious, I looked to the midnight black Elf.
Bahlzair simply shook his head, the white ponytail waving slightly behind him.
"You do the cooking, right? Why don't you just poison their food?"
His answer took a few different images for me to understand. Poisoning their food would aid the Avariel remnant, and though he was only one surface Elf, Bahlzair was not willing to help him in any way.
"So then why don't you kill just Uirrigan? That would harm the Eladrin that are using him," I shrugged. I finally realized that this was a short, sharp movement that I could not have made a few hours before.
Bahlzair let go of my hair, finally, and walked back to his wall to sit down and lean his back against it. Above him appeared more images. Killing Uirrigan would free him- too helpful.
"Well, then kill yourself," I sighed, rolling my eyes in frustration- another one of those tiny movements that I couldn't have make just a few minutes before.
And Bahlzair snorted at me. According to the images above him, he was already dead.
"Oh, come on," I moaned. "What, did you kill your mother, too?"
Bahlzair opened one eye and raised the eyebrow above it. Yes, the images above his head preached, he did kill his mother, but he was in no way sorry for it. His sister had asked him very nicely- a sharp change from being ordered around and beaten when he delayed- and he'd enjoyed the task immensely. Unfortunately, another Drow family came along and quite nearly wiped his entire family out, not too long afterward. I cringed at the gory detail with which he portrayed the attack- not even babies or small children were spared. They were either fed alive to driders, sacrificed to Lolth, or beheaded.
Bahlzair's images stopped for a few moments, and I crossed my arms over my chest.
"You didn't answer me."
Bahlzair opened his eyes and focused on me with some effort. It was less of a "how dare you" stare and more of a "please leave me alone" plea. I figured he didn't do much communication with anyone- especially since he had not once in all this time bothered to speak.
"Okay, okay, you're tired. But you don't sleep, you just said that. So what do you do?"
He closed his eyes again, and a single line slowly etched itself across the stone. When it stretched from one of his shoulders to the other, the farthest edge pulled itself upward, then back toward itself, crossing over itself and then going back toward his other shoulder again.
I had no idea what he meant, but didn't bother asking again.
Silveredge touched my tail with her foot. At first, I pulled away, still angry at her part in my poisoning, but then with a sigh, I brushed the side of her foot with my tail. I heard her release a breath, as though she'd been afraid of my reaction.
"It's my fault for leaving you alone like that in the first place," I whispered at last. She didn't respond verbally, but brushed her foot slowly along my tail as I moved it. Something about this movement was undeniably pleasing, and calming. I enjoyed it, until I heard someone approaching.
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