a/n: moving my things from tumblr/dA to one account, so... new Valen/F!PC shots on the archive. hope you enjoy. :)
The Underdark is as much a world as the realm above their heads.
Thinking this does not help in the least when she is actually faced with it. Down here there is only silence, and everything is still, as though the very earth itself is holding its breath. There is no soil, no firm silt – just fine purplish dust that coats a ground as unforgiving and dark as the drow that prowl the caverns that yawn open everywhere. It is the easiest thing to leave tracks here: things that scream that you have passed the area by not but a heartbeat ago. There are no branches you must be careful of breaking, leaves careful of stirring; this is an open land of brutality and unforgiving priorities, and it has no mercy for those who do not know its ways.
She is acutely aware of Valen's gaze on her back as she bends over the control panel to try and read the obscure Beholden dialect scrawled over the silver platform.
From what she can discern it is a set of instructions, and she is sure she will be able to dredge bits of knowledge from the bottomless pit that is her memory to translate it when the tiefling ceases his wary vigil. It is as though he is waiting for her to make some sort of backhanded move, perhaps to toss him over the edge of the gaping chasm just a few steps away. She nearly chuckles at the thought. Her, toppling Valen? The man is solid muscle from horn-tip to the end of his spaded tail, and though she is no weakling herself, she doubts she could take him in a full-on frontal assault. She also is in no rush to be on the receiving end of Devil's Bane.
"…Valen?"
He shifts a bit to the side, maybe in surprise.
"Yes?"
Palieth looks at him over one shoulder, earrings glinting in the gloom. "Please," she says in the voice she uses when talking to a particularly stubborn animal, "I understand your caution, but at least take comfort in the fact that I am under one of the most powerful binding enchantments known. Regardless of my intentions, it is not in my best interest to do anything foolish."
She had not asked for this, for she is no savior. She is someone who has been shaped by circumstance and masters better than she had deserved.
He may or may not have responded afterward, but she is too engrossed in her current task to hear – she stares at the panel until the outlandish letters begin to blur together, until they begin to make some semblance of sense, and then she focuses upon aligning the pieces of the shadow bridge. Well, she is doing so until the longsword strapped to her back somehow mysteriously slides down her shoulder, its hilt barely touching her cheek. A faint red glow peeks out from the end of the scabbard.
"Are you quite done yet? The inside of this scabbard smells absolutely fetid."
She sighs, long since having given up on trying to understand how a sword can smell. "Patience, Enserric. I shall be done soon enough."
The longsword rattles in its sheath. "Oh? Where to today, fair elven lady? Are we to do battle with ogres and giants? Not fairies, I hope. That was embarrassing."
"I apologize for offending your sensibilities," she replies, smiling with satisfaction when all of the exclamation points on the panel align. She presses the glowing button at the bottom of the panel, pleased beyond comprehension when there is a satisfying fizz of magic and a bridge materializes before their very eyes. Deekin looses a squawk of amazement and then scribbles something quickly in his offhand notebook, completely oblivious of Valen's raised brow.
"You very well should," Enserric says, his voice muffled by the scabbard. He gives a dainty cough. "So? What awaits us across this delightfully threatening and portentous bridge?"
"A colony chockfull of beholders, if I am not mistaken."
"Do they taste foul?"
Palieth pauses, considering. "Hm. I suspect they do."
"Bah. There had better be a dark elf or two. They're the best tasting lot out of the driveling rabble down here."
She looks to where the bridge ends, feeling no astonishment when she sees that the entrance is the intimidating opening of a cave, the dark within it black as pitch and nigh impenetrable by traditional torchlight. She gestures to her animal companion to move closer to her, and he does, fur brushing against the cloth of her leggings. The welcoming warmth of his mind is well-known to her, and outside of it she can see the intelligence shining in his yellow wolf-eyes, uncanny and wonderful as ever. Nercane has been her friend where others have failed her, and she thinks he has a wordless voice of such strength that it is impossible to deny.
In whispers of images, Palieth tells him to be quiet; they shall be descending into more darkness, and she shows him, encourages him to remember of all the times they have tracked and ambushed and followed together, and he nods in understanding. She turns to the second half of her group – Deekin is watching her with a bright eagerness and Valen is impassive and guarded.
"Deekin?"
"What Boss be wanting?"
"Try to be stealthy," she says. He will try, undoubtedly; Deekin possesses a single-mindedness she has not seen in another being. However, he is as conspicuous as people of his kind get. The addition of the wings and the crossbow do not help.
"Deekin be tiny little mouse now, Boss! You see."
She smiles. "Thank you."
There is nothing to say when she looks at Valen. He certainly understands the gist of what they are going to do and what their target is. She feels herself tense as she thinks of the possibility of disagreeing with him. She does not want to. He might not understand the entirety of the mad mage's spell. It does not allow her to do anything less than fulfill the Seer's prophecy. The only other option is death.
Even now she knows that the thousand small hooks of Halaster's geas are tugging her towards her ultimate goal. She wakes the compulsion of it, sometimes, feeling the need to set out with longsword in hand and dagger between teeth to kill the Valsharess, though she doesn't even know what the drow looks like.
Such is the force of the geas, and at times it is almost overwhelming. It reminds her of why she did not take much to magic to begin with. The extent of her magical abilities is to cure wounds that can cripple; she has learned from the lessons of dryads and nymphs how to force her shape to change, and those are only two different shapes – more than that she cannot imagine herself doing. It is no wonder shifters lose themselves and any sense of identity they have so easily.
She is drawn from her swirling thoughts when Valen sets a hand on the hilt of Devil's Bane, nodding with the silent solemnity of an old sylvan oak, the types of which are sure of their every branch and root.
"Lead on."
And so she does.
There are moments where he is not sure where she is.
Palieth moves quietly, with grace granted and honed by hours upon hours relentless practice and trial and error; whoever her master had been, he had been skilful and utterly thorough. When she is careful of herself and her every breath, like she is now, each action, each rise of foot and clutch of hand, is calculated. Sometimes she is indistinguishable from the shifting mass of shadowy wall. Her dark green leathers are comfortably worn and entirely silent. There is no creaking in their joints when she bends to disable a trap, no painful squeak when she closes her fist around her dagger.
Though he may not be assured of her allegiance, he must grudgingly admit that she is good at what she does. Would that be ranging? He wouldn't know. Animals have never been fond of him, and he blames it as much on his infernal heritage as he does on his general dislike of anything slobbery. The wolf – her wolf – however, is the furthest thing anything can be from slobbery. It stays in Palieth's shadow, soundless, efficient, following ever faithfully, never doubting and always watching.
She stops underneath the guttering flame of a poorly-kept torch, and he abruptly realizes just how much smaller than him she is. It is not so much a matter of height; just a matter of size. The drow females are tall and lithe and haughtily confident (the more prominent of them, anyway), and those that aren't tall and lithe and haughtily confident are several dozen other things that Valen has gotten used to. Palieth is nothing like Nathyrra, who is a different kind of quiet and deadly. Is this how all elves of the surface are? He cannot remember much of the surface, of course, but he wonders if she is anything remarkable from where she comes from.
Palieth glances around, as though she is hearing more than she is seeing, and then turns again, her green eyes suspicious. She only sees another tongueless kobold slave, as does he, though it does little to settle her.
"Drow," she says, hushed, and her voice is like a dry leaf in the twisting fleshy hallway of the beholder colony. The dark blue-black of her hair is almost invisible in the gloom. "In the next room. I do not know how many. They might know we are here already"
"Most likely," he responds. The drow have ears unlike any other. It is useless to try and outmaneuver them in the plains of the Underdark where they are the masters of the shadows and assassination.
She stops, brow furrowing in concentration. "Magus," she whispers, caution marking her sharp features. "Get their attention. We must to be rid of him first."
He acquiesces silently. "As you wish."
Somewhere between the Beholder Tyrant regurgitating slime on her boots in its dying throes and tramping out of the caves with kobold slave stragglers following, she is elevated from a nameless elf to 'my lady.'
She cannot complain about this unexpected change, certainly, though it is inexcusably unsettling to hear the man who had so fervently proclaimed her distrustful to now address her almost… formally? Palieth cannot say how she feels about it. The ones she recognizes as nobles live in trees and wear such little cloth that any so-called respectable city magistrate would find it scandalous. She asks herself what she could have done to earn herself the title of Lady. Not much. The cities and people who do not know her name give her no more attention than they would another pesky ranger, and treating her as someone out of the ordinary makes her distinctly uncomfortable.
Palieth finishes restringing her bow and lets it lean against her knee. Her eyes move over the familiar vine-and-leaf pattern swirling along its length and the smoothness of the grip. The dark wood gleams in the firelight, the fact that it is lovingly cared-for clearly evident. She thinks about the quiet affair that had been dinner as she listens to Deekin tune his lute, and she almost lets herself drift away as the familiar refrain of Little Town O'er Yonder lifts itself into the still air and echoes in the gullet of the cave they are camping in. Valen does not look as though he is much for a musical evening, though no doubt he is infinitely grateful for the fact that Deekin is not singing.
Eyes shut, she touches her head against the wall and lets out a sigh. A good night's sleep would be extremely lovely; while she has no problems with sleeping on a hard, flat surface, she is not used to the sheer silence of the place. She will lie awake long into tonight just like she has for the last two weeks at Lith My'athar, where she stares at the walls of her guestroom and longs for her chambers at the Yawning Portal, for a canopy of leaves to be shielding her instead of the ceiling of a drow-built house.
And then she is taut as a tightly-stretched rope, and in response Valen is gripping the handle of Devil's Bane.
She motions to Deekin to stop with a firm movement of the hand, and the lute ceases to sound. Nercane raises himself from the ground, moving closer to Palieth as she reaches for the dagger at her boot. She looks over the campfire and its distorting veil of heat, and her eyes meet with Valen's. He must have heard it as well: the soft, almost unnoticeable footsteps moving to the beat of the song, camouflaged expertly by the rhythm. He knows better than to have qualms about her ranger's abilities, and so he tenses to move when her eyes widen in concentration and her ears dip ever so slightly.
The dagger flashes in her hand, silver on green, and she cries out.
"Behind you!"
Valen ducks instinctively as the blade of a drow assassin swoops past him, missing his neck by a hairsbreadth.
Palieth launches herself at the first assassin and all is chaos. She catches him in the shoulder with the dagger and he yowls in pain as they both fall, but his focus does not waver in the slightest – his scarlet gaze is intent on malice, and he wastes no time in grappling her hand and tumbling them over. She feels the heat on the tip of her boot as it grazes the embers of the fire and scatters them across the cave floor. The wind is knocked out of her when the assassin slams her against the ground. She blinks to regain her senses and her breath catches when she sees the assassin holding a dart in one hand. Poison.
With more strength than he anticipates, Palieth lurches up and cracks her forehead to his; it is enough to distract him, not incapacitate him, and he reels back for a fatal instant. She grasps the hilt of the dagger buried in his shoulder and allows his momentum to tear it away. She has slit his throat before he understands what is happening, and something inside her withers as she watches the life fade from his startled crimson eyes. What foul Matron had beaten this boy into submission and flawless obedience?
She takes the dart from his still-curled fingers a breath before another drow crashes into her back, his powerful arms locking around her in a crushing embrace. She struggles, trying to break the chokehold, but there is no release until Nercane leaps upon the assassin in a blur of gray and black, sinking his teeth into the assassin's calf with the wildness of an offended guardian. Palieth moves quickly, slipping away and around the drow so she can plunge the dart into the assassin's back. Nercane retreats, muzzle stained red, and she watches as the assassin gurgles and clutches at his throat as he chokes on an unseen evil.
As he falls at her feet, she decides that yes, the dart was indeed poisoned.
Palieth turns to see Deekin freezing an opponent in place with a handy spell and then the finishing blow with a crossbow bolt between the eyes. Valen ends his battle with one of two assassins by swinging Devil's Bane so swiftly that it whines and whistles: the spiked ball takes the drow girl below the chin, sending a spray of carmine across the wall of the cave. She crumples lifelessly. The second, a wiry male, breathes his last when he attempts to take advantage of the fact that the head of Valen's massive flail is not airborne yet – he finds his neck broken with a rapid snap of chain. His eyes roll to the back of his head, he sinks to his knees, and the fight is done.
The elven ranger is silent as she looks around the carnage in the cave, at Nercane standing over the prone form of the assassin dead by the poisoned dart, his yellow stare grim. Valen flicks Devil's Bane with an ease that makes Palieth shiver, and drops of blood fling themselves from its spikes. She casts a glance at her dagger and the congealing liquid on its blade.
"The Valsharess must desperately want me to hang," she says. The regret in her voice puzzles him.
"I think that has proven sufficiently true thus far," Valen says, strapping Devil's Bane his shoulders once more.
"Another cave," she comments, bending and grasping her bow and backpack. "We must find another cave." The ground is too hard to bury the drow in and the scavengers will come quickly from all corners. Palieth faces Valen, her expression grave.
They gather their things in the dimness. He watches as she shoulders her bow carefully and taps Nercane under the chin when the wolf comes snuffling toward her inquisitively, as though it is asking about her wellbeing. Valen sees her smile when the kobold bounds forth without stumbling despite the lumbering weight of his gigantic pack, proclaiming that he is "Ready, Boss!"
She is the last to leave the cave, and he catches her lowering her head reverently and murmuring something indistinct and foreign under her breath. It is soft and respectful, and it sounds strange coming from her figure, which is so unlike anything priestly he has ever seen. The slow cadence of her sentences tells him that it is a prayer. As she finishes, the words coming to an unhurried, circling stop, he thinks that there may be more caution and things unidentified about this surfacer than he first thought there would be.
The idea is bizarrely appealing.
It is around their second campfire that Enserric finally awakens from his dormancy.
"Did I miss something?"
Palieth does not answer as she cleans the last of the blood off of her dagger.
"Did I? Everyone seems to have swallowed a rather sour lemon in my absence." He waits only for a moment before speaking again. "Oh, fine. Be that way, then. I will just have to remain awake for longer periods of time. It is not as if I need the sleep, anyway."
And so he falls into a petulant silence that suits Palieth perfectly. She continues to diligently shine her dagger, and when it is bright enough that she can see every detail of her face in its reflection. She sheathes it decisively, and then, finding herself with nothing to do, stares into the campfire until she feels her eyes begin to water. Nercane settles his head in her lap, and she absentmindedly strokes his fur, running her fingers through it and thoroughly scratching the bases of his ears. He dozes off in bliss, paws pressed against her leggings.
"Why did you call me that?" she asks, and Valen looks up, though Deekin is completely undisturbed.
He furrows his brow. "What, my lady?"
"That," she replies, perhaps a little more pointedly than she intended to. She lets out a frustrated breath. "I simply was not of the mind that you regarded me as a lady. Maybe I was mistaken… though…"
"Ah." Valen clears his throat, and it is the first time she sees him anything close to embarrassed. It is gratifying, to say the least. "Regarding this matter – I owe you an apology."
She does not say anything, instead watching him with no specific expectation.
"You seem to have marched in and taken over everything." When he realizes how that sounds, he keeps going. "I have toiled long and hard to have the drow accept me, even a little, though I suppose my infamous temper aided me as well. It was not easy to arrive at where I am now." He gives a small, wry smile at the thought. "And then you make an entrance – a surfacer elf, an outsider to them – and it takes you less than a fortnight to be labeled something other than an annoyance. I was displeased with the idea. I treated you unjustly, and I apologize."
Palieth is quiet for a while, petting Nercane. "That is rather dramatic, isn't it?"
"I have been told I have a touch for the dramatic," he says dryly.
She doesn't ask if he trusts her, because she knows he does not (yet), so she simply closes her eyes in some private contentment, as though a bit of peace has been returned to her. She smiles at the sensation of it.
"General Shadowbreath, your apology is accepted."