The ash grey Drow rocked back and forth with nearly imperceptible gurgles, arms tucked tightly against his chest as his hands pressed against the sides of his head. His loose hair, hanging to hunched shoulders, was being pulled through, bit by bit- eventually untangled and retied into a careful ponytail that brushed the back of his neck.
"I know it hurt bad," came the low, soothing female voice. "I know, sugar, I know. Don't be so hard on yourself, now."
The Drow made pathetic, short whimpering noises, shivering suddenly as though a strong wind had come through the shrine in which he sat.
"Sugar, you just wait 'til your whole self is ready," the voice cooed, even more quietly than before. "Them killers gonna get turnt right on their heels 'til you catch hold of yourself good. I know you can do it."
The Drow rolled over onto his side, still hunched up into a near fetal position. After a few moments of absolutely silent twitching, bare willpower forced the naked male to roll onto his knees in an attempt to get to the ball of thrown robes. A slight moving of air brushed his face, and the robes suddenly arose from the floor, unfurled, and moved toward him. The Drow began gurgling again, just as quietly as he'd done before.
"No rush, sugar. Ain't nobody gonna catch you. It ain't been figured out by now, it ain't gonna get figured out."
The scarred body lay still for a moment, all the muscles relaxing themselves. A few breaths passed without incident, but a twitching fit descended that pushed frustrated hisses and gurgles from the creature.
"C'mon now, Stitchie-baby," the voice purred. "Auntie got you. Don't let yourself get all grizzled up over it."
Stitches turned his head on the stone, angry enough to slam himself into it. Instead, he closed his eyes against the pain and rolled his head back and forth on the floor.
"You want that woman bad, huh?"
An unnatural sound, like a rabid animal drowned in a shallow pool of water, arose from the floor.
"Well, you gonna have her. You gonna put that thing to the best pain you can think of, and I'll just tie these old hogs 'til you get done. You take all the time you want, y'hear? Make 'er cry long as you can stand it. I'll set up right here with my arms crossed up, waitin' for that sweet music, just pattin' my foot."
A quiet hiss relaxed itself into a sigh as twitching muscles began to calm down, and the robes, which had seemingly stood in thin air for the past few minutes, were laid on top of the scarred skin.
"There you go, that's better. Sometimes, you just gotta let it do what it's gonna do. Dark gonna be real proud, the way you holdin' up," the voice noted. "First deep mission you done in years, and you holdin' together real good. Real, real good."
Stitches felt cool lips being pressed to his forehead, which was still as bewildering as it was calming. Other than Dark herself, Spark was the most gracious and patient female the Drow had ever known. He had always wondered why this had been so, and still had not reached a sufficiently satisfactory answer.
Elsewhere in the House Darkness cavern, crimson eyes followed the movements of an assassin who had just slit an unfortunate Drow female's throat.
Weak. Good that she won't breed.
The killer was obviously Drow, though nearly armored and covered head to foot. His heritage was in the way he moved, in the artful ease with which he'd took the life. But a momentary pause, caused by a severe tremor that rippled through the otherwise flawless form, caused the sole audience member to raise an eyebrow.
Twitching.
Never mind that if this assassin were somehow connected to the impostor Velryne, it made the jumpy mind-bender a liar. If it had been best to lie about how his physical infirmity had been caused, then the creature had done well; with time and luck, there would be a proper reckoning for it. But the wordless, glorious rage that burned against Nedstra could not have been false, could it? The murderous gleam in the brown eyes had been so sharp, the venom of the soul so bitter that for a few strange and tense moments, Bahlzair felt as though he were staring at a warped reflection of himself. Yet, there had been the strong mental suggestions, which no mage had ever before been able to impose on the arcane trickster. However sincere the trembling creature had seemed, there was no doubt that he was a wondrous manipulator. Bahlzair felt acceptably misled about its true loyalties and intentions.
If he fails, I'll kill both. If he succeeds, I'll kill him faster.
The ebony hided Drow dropped out of the support beams that held up Imylshalee's living space and began to follow the assassin as he tracked Peth. The killer did well, hiding his own steps within those of his quarry and taking advantage of cover to get closer to her, but suffered the sudden strike of a tremor. Bahlzair stopped short and hid himself, watching intently as the powerfully built male Drow half-crumpled into a silent mass of pain, and was absolutely shocked when he began screaming at what appeared to be thin air. Peth whipped around, seamlessly split his voice box in half with a glorious dagger throw, then rushed over to see precisely what she'd struck. When- after digging her blade into his eyes as prevention- her artless Human fingers completely revealed the face and the assassin's tools, her voice immediately assaulted the air.
"There's spies! Spies! Assassins!"
Bahlzair calmly waited until Peth turned away from her kill at last, then moved carefully toward the fallen male. He turned over his shoulder to look at the empty space that had so terrified what obviously was a hardened warrior of the true House Dhuurniv.
What did you see?
But nothing was there. There were no tell-tale signs of vermin, and even if there had been, a warrior scared of a roach or a rat deserved an unspeakably dishonorable death. Bahlzair pursed his lips in thought.
Nedstra doesn't deserve such an easy kill.
Disgusted, Bahlzair turned away to get his blade. There was only one way to ensure that Nedstra would not have the last laugh. The dark Elf had made it nearly back to the apothecary's area when a woman with deep shadows under her eyes turned into his path with her weapon drawn.
"Dos el ghil, shu."
Bahlzair turned his head slightly to one side as though he'd not understood, noting the faint glisten at the top of the female Drow's high brow. He spread his right hand in front of his left shoulder, then slowly moved the hand toward his right shoulder, pulling his fingers closed artfully as he moved. There were no spell casting words spoken, but the web appeared just the same, trapping the attacker. She began struggling, somewhat successfully, but all progress was stopped by a bolt through the back of her right eye. Bahlzair, who moved slightly to his right to avoid the resulting bloodspray, snapped his fingers to dissolve the web and saw Imylshalee standing with her recently fired crossbow. She made no mention of either of their actions, or of the struggle of House Darkness against the intruders, and she didn't ask what he was doing outside of the apothecary area. She merely reloaded her crossbow and pointed it at Bahlzair, who stood unimpressed by what she probably believed was a good threat.
"Find Nedstra. Now."
And avoiding the clearly disease-ridden corpse, Bahlzair moved around the armed female Drow, out toward the dark fires.
Nedstra listened closely to the cries around her, counting them and gauging their distance as she moved silently along a half-collapsed tunnel on the other side of her office. The tunnel, which had a rich history of its own, eventually split in two so that one half ran under the Bone College- whose entrance had long been sealed shut with warding magic- and the other half ran toward the Stingers' territory. While she planned to survive this attack on House Darkness, she didn't intend to return to it. She'd been separated from her home for a few years- or what she considered to be only a few years- yet, no Drow could forget that a voice that could prove treachery was a voice that brought the schemer down to judgement and shame.
Nedstra, head free of whatever mist had obscured her reason, had no doubt that the matron of House Dhuurniv plotted this attack. And armed with that knowledge, the former house assassin intended to pull enough strings and cut enough throats to become matron herself- a real matron, not one whose movements were constantly questioned, and who was clearly all but excommunicated from the true Underdark.
She'd nearly gotten to the split when she sensed that she was being followed. Without questioning whether it were friend or foe, she pushed her fingers into her hip sack, whirled around, and filled the space between herself and her pursuer with spike shuriken.
Down the way, the soft whisper of piwafi cloth breathed against the flying fangs. Nedstra, her eyes able to see every detail in the total darkness of the tunnel, watched the cloak twist and turn, then collapse to the floor. She waited for a few moments, then saw a few twitches. Not willing to allow Velryne to rise, Nedstra drew her dirk and walked carefully back toward the fidgeting figure.
Stitches leaped up like a rabid dog, pulling the edge of the piwafi over Nedstra's head and forcing her to the ground with the weight of his body. A few of the shuriken, unwrapped from the fabric, clattered to the ground, but he already had two in his hands. His body momentarily strengthened by his simple lust for revenge, he struck down into what he innately knew were Nedstra's eye sockets, unsatisfied until he had pushed through the eye to the brain. Nedstra screamed, which jarred against his damaged nerves as though he'd stepped down into boiling hot, electrified water, but he continued, wresting the dirk from her flailing hands and hacking through major tendons- first in her shoulders, then at her hips. With this done, he pulled the piwafi back and staggered backward, still enduring her sharp keen. His head spun and rang, but he did not allow himself to pause for very long. Rushing at her, he dropped his elbow down into her chest, cracking two ribs. She began choking, then, blood welling up in her throat rapidly. Deciding to end the party early, he drove the dirk deep after the broken ribs, pulling back muscle and skin until he found Nedstra's trembling heart.
"S-s-ssuorr."
Though the halting word was no more than a breathless whisper, the echo of it in his head still provoked an agonizing tremor that momentarily paralyzed him. Knowing his time was running out, the ash grey Drow dug his fingers in, cut the heart free, buried the dirk in the body and slid the scroll he'd been protecting onto its hilt. He smiled at the blood on it, then wrapped his hand in Nedstra's hair and began dragging her back toward the mouth of the tunnel that she'd thought would be her fresh start.
Spark had been calmly filing her nails while House Dhuurniv and House Darkness assassins alike ran around, possessed of a manic bloodlust that found blades pushed gleefully through every back and chest in which they could find purchase. No one had time to notice that the small metal instrument seemed to be moving on its own, and the one House Darkness sap who'd accidentally gotten too close to it was richly rewarded with the pointed end of it, jammed through the back of her throat a messy total of twenty-six times.
That had been the only time that the mage, patiently sitting on the ramp that led up to Nedstra's office, had even bothered to move herself. She sighed as she watched the bloody death match before her- most of her picked favorites had fallen, and one pair had even killed each other.
If I was a bettin' woman, I'd not have a cent to my name, she thought with a sad smile. And at that point, Stitches re-emerged from the tunnel that she'd pointed out to him more than an hour before.
"You done, sweetheart?" the mage asked, unconcerned that the frenzied mass below might hear her apparently disembodied voice.
Stitches couldn't even nod. He all but crashed into her, nearly falling off the platform to the cave floor some distance below.
"Well, you held up real good," Spark soothed smilingly. "Everybody else already gone. We can walk right on outta here; I ain't gonna let go these fools 'til we out."
Bahlzair couldn't help but feel as though he'd barely survived some wicked game. He narrowed his eyes, displeased, but didn't bother to complain. There could be no reasoning with a demon.
He and Imylshalee seemed to have been wandering around, utterly lost in a cave barely large enough to rival the Bone College, fending for their lives against people he absolutely knew were part of House Darkness. The betrayal itself didn't worry him, as it was to be expected that enterprising souls would take advantage of any flicker of chaos, but he didn't expect Humans and surface Elves to be possessed of such enterprising souls. It seemed to him as though the other races of House Darkness were out-Drowing the Drow.
When he and Imylshalee finally made it up the ramp to Nedstra's study, Bahlzair fought hard not to smirk at the pulpy mess that was her exposed chest. The blood trail, which ran straight into the partially collapsed tunnel, left no room for doubt about what Nedstra was attempting to do with her last few moments of life. While he took in the glinting bone that showed in the skull and the obvious, jagged hole between her lungs, Imylshalee paid much more attention to the dirk and it's message. She yanked at Bahlzair's hair, taking his whole head back with unusual force. When the ebony skinned Drow turned careful eyes her way, she merely tossed her head toward the weapon and the small scroll.
"Read it," she pronounced.
Bahlzair raised his hands to sign that he could not read, only to have them slapped at.
"Enough," the younger Drow female snorted. "You've woven quite a web, feigning at ignorance the way you did. But I'm not as easily fooled as those Dhuurniv creatures." Imylshalee squatted, picked up the bloody blade and the note, then smacked Bahlzair- open handed- with a palm-full of Nedstra's blood. "Now take this, and read it to me."
You're welcome. Every other consort she takes will be sorely insufficient, and will be beaten accordingly. And do feel free to rob her blind, of course. That sort of thing is expected of escaped slaves.
Bahlzair, who had allowed his entire head to be pushed to his left by Imylshalee's slap, sighed at the powerful urge to show her which of the two of them was truly physically stronger. Repressing it temporarily, he turned his head back and reached forward to take the scroll. Cracking the wax seal, he opened it and raised a hand to sign the message to Imylshalee. He didn't bother looking for the demon prince, didn't bother attempting reason.
Predictability is merely another weakness, after all, he thought with a bitter chuckle.
Stitches and Spark had gotten approximately two yards from the entrance to House Darkness's tunnels before the ash grey Drow at last gave in. He crumbled to his knees, thrashing so furiously that the already damaged piwafi didn't have a chance against his jerking body. Spark at once set up a circular ward, politely convincing most onlookers in the fairly open field between Sembia and Urmlaspyr to simply look elsewhere. But there was one female, clothed in bright priestess's robes and a veil, who walked unhampered toward Spark and Stitches.
"Hey there, baby," Spark smiled. "Lookin' mighty good."
"So, didja meet anybody I know?" the priestess asked, stepping into the warded circle and laying a warm hand on Stitches's spasm-riddled back. At first, Stitches couldn't comprehend who was touching him, and rolled his jerking head to one side in the vain effort to at least nip at whoever it was. But when he met the familiar blood red eyes behind the veil, he knew instantly who it was. Strange, empty clicks sounded at the back of his throat- it was the best he could do, at the time. The red eyed priestess raised her eyebrows, wondering what the sounds could mean, but stayed right next to the blood spattered mess anyway. Deep in the damaged caverns of the Drow's mind, her jovial fearlessness was filed away.
"Oh, take your time," the priestess of Lliira smirked. "Spark's got her brain melting magic stuff going, and I got two good daggers that'll keep any stubborn pests away."
"They ain't dull neither," Spark added. "I 'preciate you, darlin'; you gone well above what you was gettin' paid for at first."
And the priestess, who was busy pulling the knots and dried blood out of the ash grey Drow's hair, merely shrugged. "I got curious. Figured I'd stick around."
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