Victim

"You're looking quite lovely today," she said.

"Thank you," he said.

Her lips curled into a feline smile of genuine amusement. "Not you, the spider."

She leaned over him, and he helplessly watched her cleavage shift back in forth in front of his eyes while she petted the arachnid that was crawling somewhere in the vicinity of the wall behind his head, a sight that he no longer had any appetite for. Jarlaxle blinked, slowly, but didn't close his eyes, glad at last to be awake. After last night, he was glad to be alive, even if the thin fluttering of his breath was forced past several bruised and broken ribs.

He flexed his left hand, making sure that he could still move it, and wasn't sure whether to be relieved or afraid that although stiff and numb, she'd apparently left his fingers whole. Perhaps she was saving it for another day.

His torturer's face finally leaned back into view, and he made eye contact with her for a lingering moment, long enough to see disgust in her eyes at his act of forcing her to see him.

He cracked a smile. "I could qualify for the title of oss'kiyoos too someday, you know. Why don't you show me some of that respect?" He tried to prop himself up on one arm, but aches lanced through his muscles from shoulder to elbow, and bright spots appeared before his eyes as his lungs suddenly pinched.

Damn, he thought. I've gone and poked a hole in my lungs. Now she'll watch me drown in my own blood. Again. He closed his eyes, sinking back down to the chilly stone floor. Jarlaxle wanted to let out a roar of frustration. How many times has it been since I died the first time? Two? Twelve? Twenty? I can't remember. I can't remember!

Then, the coldly sinking realization. I'm never getting out of this cellar. His smile twitched on his lips. Not alive, at any rate.

He dimly realized when his vision cleared that she was watching him quietly, a calculating expression in her yellow eyes.

"You did promise me that you would turn me into a drider to spare me the pain, didn't you?" he asked, turning his head away from her and staring at the blood spattered wall.

She sniffed. "Consider it a promise kept," she said sweetly.

Jarlaxle shut his eyes. I've changed my mind. I don't want to be awake. 'Consider it a promise kept' was a drow expression regarding betrayal and duplicity. A shudder passed through his body at the obvious implication of torture to come.

"Have you tired of our sport?" she inquired in the same sweet voice.

"Never, Chatalna dear," Jarlaxle said. His voice was a civil drawl left over from the days of spiced wine and long hours by the faerie fire in his office, surrounded by luxury and opulence as he savored the latest fine literature of Cormanthor and waited for his operatives to return and report to him about a latest transaction. "What will it be today? Will you finally remove the source of my manhood and bring me closer to Lloth?"

"No," the female said, her voice low in her throat. "You've had enough chances to recant your heresy."

There was the slightest sound, he had learned to pinpoint and appreciate, of leather rubbing against leather, and then hissing as the snakes awakened on her whip.

Jarlaxle let out a series of small, painful chuckles that threatened to reduce into moans. "My dear priestess, Vhaeraunian literature does not make me a masked follower."

Chatalna stroked her snakes and stared down at him, an action so familiar that he could tell simply by the pleasured sounds her serpent whip was emitting. "Why don't you tell Lloth that yourself?"

He spasmed, then writhed and contracted into a ball. He watched his own vomiting as he threw up viscous, irregular slime, splashing the floor with a number of different colors cooling against the stone, dotted with chunks of bright red half-digested food. "I think…I need…a draught."

The drow priestess walked over, the heels of her boots clicking against the hard stone, and took his shoulders, roughly turning him to face her. "Why don't you ask Vhaeraun to help you?" Her eyes were hard, but her lips curved into a smirk. "After all, he's supposed to be all-hearing, isn't he?"

"Lady, I am not a Vhaeraun follower," Jarlaxle gasped, his chest full of stabbing pains and his throat choking on his own blood. "I would know better than to attempt his worship in a city so dedicated to her majesty, the Queen of Spiders." He sagged in her arms, lacking the strength to hold himself up. He didn't know what else to do. Reasoning with them had failed, trying to get them to use common sense had been a debacle that ended in his torture by fire and his death and resurrection. He begged, openly, openly for his life. "Please, stop this."

She drop kicked him, and when he slammed into the wall, he hardly felt it because he was already in so much pain from his chest being crushed under her foot. "You're pathetic. Just like your demi-god worshipping ilk infesting the forests Above and daring to call the Lady of Loss a usurper of the Drow people." Her lip curled in hatred. "I hope you die as many times as necessary to ensure that you teach your 'friends' a lesson and your 'loyal' allies come back to rescue you so I can personally crush your band of infidels and show you for the Vhaerunian traitors you are."

Here he was, drowning in his own blood, crumpled in a pool of his own vomit, and he could only raise one hand and twitch his way through a message in the Drow sign language. You…have fun with that.