He felt heavy and each breath was a labor to draw.
What had happened?
Phaere and the Silver Dragon and Veldrin with the eyes too sad for a drow…
The hunting party.
They claimed they came in the name of Lloth and whether she had any power beyond the Houses and the Middledark's great cities or not was of little consequence. They came in the name of defending the drow's oppressive ways and slaughtering those that escaped alive. They came for him, to avenge Ust Natha that fell in the wake of his disappearance, and at that moment there were probably others scouring the world for a Veldrin of distant Ched Nasad.
He hoped she fared well on her journey and that somewhere there was a human who walked the surface that had conquered Ust Natha.
The thought made him smile.
And maybe with Veldrin, he would have stood a chance against the hunting party's numbers. He had watched her fell Umber Hulks and Illithids without flinching and he was no fledging apprentice wielding his first dagger. But the priestess had thralls and assassins to spare and even as he cut them down more seemed to come.
So, he had reached recklessly into the Weave and, with a prayer upon his lips, called up a dimensional door to take him away—somewhere, anywhere away.
It had been reckless and his aim had been a great distance, which could have landed him anywhere on Toril or under it. But what choice did he have? Death? Not at the hands of Lloth's Chosen. Not if he had a choice. There were many beasts he would have gladly fed first before that.
But now… now what? Where was he? He felt warm. And comfortable. And there was singing?
He listened closer.
Humming and breathy whispers of words he couldn't make out, but he recognized the Elven tongue easily enough.
Gods, was he a prisoner?
No, he certainly wouldn't be comfortable as a prisoner. Or even alive.
The thought was enough to trigger long-set alarms within him and a primordial beast within panicked. Unable to even open his eyes or feel anything past his wrists, Solaufein still shifted and tried to force himself upright and into some state of wakefulness.
Forcing his eyes to open and focus, his vision spun and everything was a swirl of darkness and flickering shadows. Pain rushed to the fore of his consciousness, but it was something at least to know that he could feel—that he breathed and he lived.
Then, hands, small but strong and firm, steadied him and he was on his back again in an instant.
Was he upright to start?
"None of that," a voice chided and it was the same one that had been singing earlier, though this time it spoke the harsher, throatier words of the drow. Even so, the tone was gentle and the voice kind. "Rest now. There is no danger here."
Solaufein's vision still swam, but among the collage of shadows and half-color he picked out a pair of piercing, silver eyes.
And with that he fell unconscious.
Solaufein came to again an indeterminable amount of time later to the sensation of hands and fingertips moving across his skin in whisper-light movements like flames tickling tinder.
This time, he quelled his panic and waited, mustering the strength to open his eyes.
When he did, the hands were gone.
He was in a room of sturdy stone walls and dim, gray light seeping through the seams of a dirty and patched curtain pulled over the window.
He turned his head, in as much as his stiff neck would let him, and saw a figure standing at a table against the far wall under a magical light that hovered overhead. A woman, he thought, by the cut of her figure and the long skirt that pooled at her feet.
She was preparing something, given the motions of her hands and the sounds he picked up of grinding and stirring, and when she turned her head and reached for another vial of something in a dusky bottle, he could make out the delicate, upward sweep of her ear amid the nest of her short, dark hair.
A surface elf—a moon elf if he remembered his lore right and he placed the pale, almost luminescent glow of her skin correctly.
When she turned toward him, her hands were still occupied with the motions of mixing something in a stone mortar with a round, marble stone and the magical orb of light that had been illuminating her work followed just over her shoulder. It lit the delicate features of her face with a cool light and defined it with sharp shadows.
Elves were known to be beautiful creatures—even the drow. So it was no surprise that this female was just that. But there was a mulish set to the fine line of her jaw and a hardness in her eyes—silver, the ones he had seen before—that spoke of experience and years. Eternally youthful she certainly appeared, but he wondered how many centuries old she truly was.
Eventually, those eyes alighted upon him just as she reached his side and she seemed momentarily surprised to find him watching her. Then her lips curved slightly and she set herself beside him on the very edge of the thin mattress he rested upon. Casually, she reached up to the mage-light over her shoulder and grasped it with her hand, dimming it and turning its color to a smoldering blue.
Solaufein blinked and realized that he had been cringing against it before. But this, this was tolerable, much more akin to the bioluminescent fungi of the tunnels and caverns below.
"You wake," she said withdrawing her hand. She spoke in Drowic, as fluent as before. "I wondered when you might. My name is Ara."
He frowned. That didn't sound right. Darthiir names were usually longer, no? Not that he knew much about the surface, but that seemed fairly consistent…
"Arathyralei Eleralith," she supplied off-handedly as she set the mortar aside and began to wipe the pestle clean with her fingers, of what he could see was a thick paste. She gave him a knowing look. "Just call me Ara. Do you have a name?"
It was so strange, to be in this position, speaking to a darthiir, who spoke the words of the drow so fluently and casually, and gave his heritage no more acknowledgment than that. What did it mean? Was this a trick? A trap? Was she mixing a poison? No, she was handling it with her bare skin. It couldn't be a poison—not of any real potency.
The darthiir—Ara—seemed to sense or see his panic setting in. She reached for him, the long sleeve of her dress slithering across the bare flesh of his chest, and he caught her wrist quickly in his hand. The motion made his entire body ache but he was relieved that his reflexes were with him. Was she armed? He cursed himself for not looking.
Her eyes met his and betrayed no fear. Carefully, she laid her other hand over his and began to rub his knuckles, kneading them with firm, gentle circles. "Your hands are callused and scarred—you are covered in scars," she whispered. "You were a warrior, wherever you came from, weren't you?" Her eyes softened. "To have survived so long in the Underdark, you must be very strong. No wonder you are so afraid. The strongest always are when they are helpless like this. It is not your way."
Solaufein swallowed hard, his eyes darted from their hands to her eyes and back. The last gentle touch he had known was Veldrin's hand upon his arm, consoling him and urging him to follow at the same time. Before that? Phaere and the moments they stole away from the world outside and that memory was so old as to be a skeleton—dust and bone and naught else. After her turning, he had never trusted anyone enough to let his guard down. Not in the city; not among the blood thirsty cutthroats seeking scraps of glory in the name of their houses.
"Relax, warrior," Ara said at length, laying his hand—his grip long gentled and broken—upon his chest, and pressing it there with hers. "I have not healed you to see you hurt again. I swear it."
He took a breath and then another, trying to slow the gallop of his heart, and soothe the gnashing teeth of the primordial creature in him. But he flinched and reached for her hands when he felt her touch again, her fingertips ghosting over his ribs and the tender flesh of his abdomen.
She smiled. "Would you like to sit up and watch me work?"
Solaufein nodded, although he didn't think he'd have the strength to stay upright for long, and let her guide his arm around her shoulders. She felt frail and far too slender beneath his touch, but she had no trouble lifting him and propping him against the stone wall that the cot was pressed to. The chill of it pierced him and he realized for the first time that he had been stripped of more than just his shirt.
Modesty was not a trait of the drow, but he gripped the blanket nonetheless. "My things…"
Something in her eyes told him that she wanted to laugh, but knew better. "Your clothing was stained beyond saving and your leathers tattered beyond use. There are some shirts and trousers in the footlocker there that you can use, though, when you are up." She gestured to the corner and a sturdy, lockbox against the wall. "Your weapons were taken by the Marshal. I will get them for you if you feel safer with them."
"Marshal?"
She shook her head. "Marshal Bren. He organizes our militia and he means well. I am afraid he does not trust you."
"I cannot blame him."
"You are one man."
"I am drow."
Ara raised her eyes to his. "One drow, who I found dying three days ago," she answered. "I like our chances."
She blinked one eye at him, friendly and familiar, though she was neither.
Solaufein watched her as she pulled old bandages away from his wounds and cleansed them with warm water and a soft rag, kept at his bedside. That done, she began to rub the paste she had created into the gashes.
"You are not a cleric," he observed.
She glanced at him. "Drow poisons are voracious," she said. "It took everything out of me to take their taint from you. It will be a day at least before I can work my spells again. Tomorrow, we will do away with this primitive nonsense and go about this properly."
"Ah, then I apologize. I have never known anyone capable of undoing a Handmaiden's work. I am… very grateful."
Ara smiled. "I had help."
With that she stood and turned away and he said nothing.
Then, with no warning whatsoever, a beast appeared at the foot of his bed.
Solaufein, on reflex, tried to scramble away from the animal—toward the wall as if he could climb it—but his progress was hindered by his wounds and by the fact that the animal had seen fit to join him on the bed and pin his legs with its weight.
A dog. Just a dog, he told himself. Drow sometimes kept dogs—however rarely. Or rather, they kept canines. Dogs of the sort bred to hunt in the low light of the Underdark's caverns, beasts that were ferocious by nature, and ones that could not in any way be considered pets. Hellhounds were not unheard of and even preferred. But once, just once, he had seen a blink dog.
Given the way this animal had just appeared, that was his best guess.
It did little to calm Solaufein as the animal stared at him with large, unreasonably intelligent eyes. It was a slim, long-legged canine with large, upright ears, a long snout, and a dense coat of reddish fur.
"Ambrus!" Ara scolded the beast, shooing it off the bed with a flap of her hands and long sleeves. The dog obeyed, springing away from Solaufein and dancing out of the elf woman's reach, prancing on its toes and swinging its tail around in a playful show. "Leave him be! I told you not to come in here, you mongrel!"
The dog leapt over the bed and then back again, clearing it and Solaufein by a good foot, bowed low with its rump high in the air, and then blinked in and out of sight one and then twice.
On its third attempt, Ara spanked the animal with the flat of her hand.
It howled as if it had been grievously wounded, staggered away, and then blinked again out of sight.
Solaufein had no idea what to make of this display.
Ara shook her head and pushed some stray hair from her eyes. "It must be dinner time," she explained. "Now that you are with us, I will bring you something. You must be starved."
Well, now that she mentioned it…
"Ambrus will be back, no doubt. Go ahead and give him a swat if you want. It will not deter him long, but you can always try. But do not feed him or you will not ever be rid of the nuisance—that was my mistake." Shaking her head, she went to her worktable in the corner. A moment later, she returned. With a knife. "Here."
Solaufein frowned when she offered the blade to him handle first. "What is this?"
"I cannot get your things before dinner and I know you will feel safer if you are armed," she said. "So take it."
It was a simple knife with a wooden handle and a wide blade with a single, razor-like edge—one meant for utility rather than defense. Once upon a time, it might have been a hunting knife.
Solaufein accepted it, gingerly. He ran his thumb over the blade and turned it in his hand.
It was trust he did not deserve, really—that no drow deserved. But would treasure this kindness.
"I…" He considered the blade for a long moment and then nodded. "Thank you, Ara."
His grasp, or maybe his use of Common, must have surprised her, because she didn't answer at first. Then she nodded. "Of course. I will be back as soon as I am able."
He watched her as she turned away and reached for the door.
Here he was on the Surface and he lived. It was more than he could have dreamed not more than a week before. And the only reason he was alive was this woman he barely knew.
"Solaufein."
She turned toward him, her brow knitted in confusion. "I'm sorry?"
He rubbed the blankets gathered in his lap between his forefinger and thumb, testing the feel of rough-spun wool and marveling at just how little it differed from the blankets of his bunk in Ust Natha. It was one of the few similarities he'd find on the Surface, he imagined. "My name is Solaufein," he said at length.
Her expression softened and then she began to smile. "Well then, welcome to the Hordelands."
No, I don't know why I'm starting another story. Fanfiction is a curse designed to eat your brain.