Siblings
Part VIII.I: The Endgame: The Game of Kings, I
3
"All set and secured," Imoen-as-Imrae said. "We are ready to proceed, Mistress. At your command."
The cortège of Phaere, Matron Mother of the House Despana, moved out slowly from the ancient compound of the House. Twenty drow guards, all in all; in the midst, the Handmaiden, Favoured of Phaere and Sendai both; the male, Solaufein, whom most expected, and many openly whispered, to be the Matron Mother's newest favoured mate; and, finally, at last, the Honoured, the Exalted, the Saviour, the Faithful, Phaere Despana herself. Apart from some brief ventures to the combat arena, to see her out in the streets as this was a rare thing, indeed; as the retinue proceeded through the dim streets of Ust Natha, the inhabitants averted their eyes in respect; or knelt.
The procession moved towards a much newer compound; which was the place where Sendai the Half-Breed resided and which she made for her own temple and base of operations—Grey, red, white and adamantine; orderly, taut and obedient; finally, utterly ruthless and ready to kill at a word, or a fingersnap, from the Matron Mother—they proceeded. To walk apart from House and Queen was to walk into the grave, after all; the Matron knew best.
Sarevok had approved of the discipline in this place, back when Adalon had first introduced them to her troops; that rather said it all— She wondered, briefly, how long they would last if they were found out; and could not escape home.
She still had some problems processing that one; and then, problems with having fewer problems than she thought she should have; it seemed like a logical progression, one that would take her— Where, exactly? Better concentrate on the survival—
Reading her thoughts, her brother reached out to her. "Favoured Imrae," he murmured; "There is news about the traitor who was hired to destroy the House Jae'llat. Apparently, she and her companions were noticed by a patrol while escaping to the surface."
"To the surface?" she started. Well, good riddance and good for them; she almost didn't believe when Sarevok mentioned the possibility that Veldrin could have been a worshipper of Eilistraee—
"Yes, Favoured Imrae," he now nodded, with the exact amount of triumph as was permitted in a drow male. "Do you command that I send a hunt after them?"
She pretended to consider. "Ehh... No. Later, maybe. This is more important." She decided to add a proverb; they had here one for everything. "The best knife is the unseen one, male."
They arrived— Phaere lowered her shawl, lightly, and awaited as Sarevok-as-Solaufein and she divested them of the guards, who were to remain outside; only the three of them would enter Sendai's own territory.
Sarevok nodded in passing at Captain Egeissag and Thelynn'ss, Sendai's Favoured Mate, as they entered— On her side and part, she had Diaytha. The priestess was dangerous; she drew her power directly from Sendai herself, and commanded the Elemental Prince who had first delivered Adalon's children back to Ust Natha. Actually, they were all dangerous, here in Sendai's temple; even if Egeissag was half-defected to their House already. He was an ambitious one, and greedy for promotion.
"How is the Mistress?" she asked Diaytha.
"Lloth guard you; she is in good health," the drow replied. "The preparations are almost complete. Do you really have the blood?"
She threw the priestess an annoyed look— "Do you think we would bother the Matron Mother with a visit to the half-breed if we did not? On that matter, remember that the House Despana expects her to uphold her end of the bargain, as well."
"She will," Diaytha ascertained as she swallowed the insult. "Though her sire was a rivvin god, her ambition is fully drow. Lloth be praised; had she not approved of the Mistress' existence, why would she give her the gift of continued life?"
"Why would she, indeed?" Imoen-as-Imrae intimated.
Diaytha smiled beatifically. "Who knows better than the Goddess?"
Having been at the receiving end of a lot of applied theology throughout her life, she decided to forego exploring the topic further— Where had she been before? Oh yes: playing the greedy fool. "Again; as long as the half-breed upholds the bargain, House Despana will comply," she noted.
Diaytha's smile did not waver. "Of course. On the day of the Mistress' sweet ascension, the House Despana, first at her side, will also be the first among the drow." A bald-faced lie; almost a sign of respect in the drow culture; Sendai, like Sarevok, and unlike Illasera and Amelyssan, wanted the power for herself, and not for Father.
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Sendai, they found with her pet, playing at her favourite game: eat-a-slave. Today, at least, the slaves were derro, those maniacal, half-crazed, half-sentient, half-animal abominations that the drow frequently bred for menial tasks; but Lashar'ra—
Lashar'ra was something else entirely. Not even the poisonmasters in Ust Natha could tell if there was any antidote to her venom. Not even Qilue or Taso Kala could explain what sort of an unholy union of Lloth's and Bhaal's powers she was; it was, in fact, the spider's existence that drove the former over the edge. Imoen still remembered the crazed woman, yelling, "L'elend zhah alurl!" as she plotted a strike on Sendai's temple: "The traditional is best!"
"It is always a pleasing sight to see the children of Lloth feed, is it not?" Phaere commented, meanwhile, conversationally, coming up to the adamantine barrier of the balcony.
"Yes, Matron Mother," Diaytha replied. "A truly auspicious symbol for the Mistress' reign. It is not common knowledge, but the Mistress raised her from egg and infused her with her powers—"
On the arena below, the gigantic spider took another derro between its mandibles and crushed him— Was it even supposed to do that? Imoen tried to remember her previous jaunts against giant spiders. Didn't they usually prefer to trap their victims, inject venom, and wait until the prey liquefied?
—Sendai was with them; fresh-faced, relaxed and happy. "Matron Mother Phaere!" she cried out. "I could not believe it when Diaytha told me! You have it! The blood!"
Adalon watched the drow with amusement. "Yes," she replied. "It took some time, and a lot of searching. Most of the hatcheries around here are, indeed, tainted. But at last, we found it: the blood of a purebred Kuo-Toan Prince. Can the ritual finally begin, or do you still lack something that you would ask House Despana to deliver?"
Her sister: a triangular face with white hair and red eyes, as they all here were; to Imoen, almost indistinguishable—laughed. "No," she said. "We still lack the main component, but its delivery is not the task of House Despana." Playing with the onyx ring on her finger, she continued, "Come. I'll take you to them."
In the corner of her eye, Imoen saw a grimace pass through Adalon-as-Phaere's face. Just a bit longer, she thought. Just a bit.
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The wyrmlings were absolutely adorable; they crowded around them like kittens, begging to be loved, making small noises— Sendai watched them with an expression of pure disgust. "Self-righteous creatures of light," she muttered; then, her mood improved, "Although not so self-righteous after several séances with tentacle rods." The closest one pushed its nose into her hands. "Still," she concluded. "I'll be glad to be rid of them."
She looked up to them. "Well, silver," she insinuated, looking at Adalon. "How do you enjoy your children? They think I am their mother, as you can see; I was there for them, on the day of their hatching... —Ah-ah," she waved her finger as the woman, with fury in the red eyes, flashing, momentarily, silver, pushed towards her. "Look up." Crossbows.
"Bolts of dragonslaying," Sendai explained, "—Now, you," she continued, "You are all protected, I daresay. Spells upon spells: spells woven into clothes, spells in contingencies, spells simply cast before your arrival; enchanted weapons and armour— Enchanted blood. Enchanted scales," she added, looking again towards the dragon. "You are all protected. They, however, are not. It's a horrible hostage situation to find yourself in, isn't it?"
"What do you want?" Adalon demanded.
"Why," the drow smiled. "To talk to my own blood, silver."
"Fine," her brother, arm on arm, replied, at peace. "Make your point. Just be quick."
Their sister looked at him. "Look at that," she said. "It is a rivvil and it is a male, and it wants to speak— No," she clarified, instantly. "I want to speak to my sister."
Imoen, finished with assessing the situation: crossbows; Sendai; Thelynn'ss; Diaytha; Lashar'ra; Adalon, Sarevok, herself and seven bright-eyed silver dragon wyrmlings— shrugged. "I second our brother's point. What do you want? To invite me in? Illasera and Amelyssan already tried that. They are both dead."
Sendai watched her. "You would have made a great drow, Malla Imrae," she said, with what sounded like an oddly genuine admiration. "Or a great ally to our cause."
She sighed. "They tried that, too— Hey. How did you found yourself working with Illasera, anyway? I thought that, you know, drow and surface elves— Or even half-elves—"
The bait did take; Sendai laughed. "Illasera? Poor Illasera. All we needed of Illasera and her goons was to scare you into gathering as many Children in one place as possible."
"Well," Imoen said. "She did manage to, as well, and rather efficiently. And now?"
"Now?" Sendai laughed. "Now we strike. My army from the North, Abazigal's from the South; that beast Il-Khan can also take part in the fun, if he wants to; or not. Balthazar is inside the Enclave—"
"Obviously," Imoen noted, rather bored; Abazigal was, then, hiding in the Amkethran Desert; Illasera could have told her as much. "The question is, however— Assuming you win that free-for-all, what do you think happens next?"
Finally. "Next?" Sendai asked. "Next? Tell me. You are now drow, even though, by an accident of birth, you were not born this way. Having witnessed our great culture – participated in it – do you not agree that the destiny of the drow is to conquer all?"
Phrases and proverbs and clichés again— A sure sign of an orderly mind disturbed. "You are bluffing," Imoen said, delightfully. "You don't know. You don't know if someone other player does not emerge; you don't know if just killing everyone, or nearly everyone, will be enough; you don't know if Father does not emerge— He may be a rivvin god. But he is a god. Illasera told me that you were all working blindly—"
Sendai hissed. "That darthiir. Iblith." The wyrmling in her hand, sensing its mother's anger, whimpered lightly.
Enough, sister. I have them.
"Yes," Imoen said aloud, lightly. "Enough. My first murder was a drow."
She managed to cast a protective mantle on one of the wyrmlings before the first bolt hit; the brother, better prepared, saved three— Three were dead, pierced by crossbow bolts; silver blood, smelling of rain, flowed out, onto the dark, adamantine floor— "Adalon," Imoen hissed as she drew onto her weapons and her magic.
The mother dragon stood amidst the blood and broken bodies of her broken children, dumbstruck, wide-eyed, and betrayed— Sendai twisted the ring on her finger, and vanished.
Thelynn'ss was a fighter, and so she left him to her brother; Diaytha raised her head and hands, basking in the glory of Sendai's power, and so she moved towards her, to disrupt her; Lashar'ra moved uneasily towards them— "Adalon," she hissed out again, ducking between the long legs of the spider and the crossbow bolts; why did drow females insist on wearing such long, bothersome hair?— "The protection won't last long. Grab them, and go."
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Afterwards, the two things she remembered from that fight was the blood; the darkness; and the screaming.
The blood: the silver blood of the dragon children around, above, over whose bodies they stepped; the colourless lymph of Lashar'ra, spewing out of her bloated body wherever she or Sarevok managed to hit her; finally, the accustomed, the beloved red blood of her own, of Sarevok, of Thelynn'ss and Diaytha and the crossbow wielders on the balconies above them, the blood that would dye the rivers of the Coast— When she hit them with her arrows, and their bodies slumped to the floor, the blood rained on them against the darkness of the adamantine walls; by the end, they were covered in it, wading in it— They screamed; Diaytha screamed louder: Lashar'ra hit her, stepped on her, injected her with poison— Blood again: the one in the vial Sendai held, the one of the mad Kuo-Toan Prince, almost black and half-curdled already.
My mate and my priestess are slaughtered, she saw in her sister's eyes when Sendai appeared again. But their lives have not been in vain. They have bought me the time.
She started towards the woman, with her sword and her daggers and her magic; her brother, who had just bisected Lashar'ra's abdomen and Thelynn'ss' body both, held her back.
Her drow sister overturned the vial; spoke a harsh word; and was—
—MURDERED, the fiend lord laughed. HAHAHAHA! A GREAT JOKE HAS BEEN PLAYED ON YOU, DARKLING. THE OFFERING IS TAINTED. YOUR SISTER AND YOUR BROTHER HAVE MURDERED YOU. YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY ARMIES. MOST AMUSING, IT IS. HAHAHAHA! COME, NOW.
The utter surreality of what was happening—of that indistinct, blurred figure, at the edge of the field of vision, that mass of feeling and anger and evil and hatred, not really there and yet completely so, standing in the vapours of the black and red and silver blood, red and gold itself, with a hint of masses of same creatures behind it—laughing; it hit her just as she was winding down from the fight. She looked to Sarevok; they had only planned to disrupt the ritual.
Sendai watched the creature with wide eyes, half-alarmed and half-terrified; at least, unlike Amelyssan, she managed to utter a thing more. "No! I will destroy you, Imrae... Imoen! I will find you and eat your beating heart! I will—"
Three things happened: she dispelled the magic; Sarevok killed the sister; Sendai cast a spell.
A deep rumble tore through the compound; from the distance, she could hear explosions; Imoen, alarmed, looked behind herself through the cloud of glittering, disappearing dust that had been her sister. "What's happening?!"
Her brother first quickly turned to the creature before them. "Return whence you came, demon," he said. "Your summoner is dead." Then, as that dispersed and he turned to her, she already had the answer for him. "She's finishing what Irenicus started. Let's go."
They ran out of the room; outside, the Despana and Sendai troops, thus far merrily murdering each other, had also paused, listening. "The Mistresses are dead!" Imoen yelled at them. "The cave is collapsing! Leave!"
—Straight into the awaiting maws and tentacles of the beholders and the illithid.
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Selfishness fought against servitude in the mind of the dark elves; in the end, the victor was neither, but survival instinct. The Captain Egeissag found them, over the cracks in the city platforms, amidst the deep moans and rolling roars announcing the impending structural collapse. "Malla Imrae!" he yelled out. "Solaufein!"
"Assemble whoever you care for and leave the city," Sarevok ordered. "We will meet you at the gates."
There would be a stampede there, obviously, and panic— She looked at Sarevok. "Ready, brother?"
He nodded; blink-home-blink— They were at the gates; and already the drow were killing each other for the privilege of stepping through them. Adamantine was, after all, famously, impervious to magic—
They really had to ascertain the command, first.
She took a deep breath; stilled her heart; reached deep within herself, for her powers; and snarled. By the side, she could see—feel—her brother do the same.
"What is going on here?!" she, as Imrae, yelled; her voice resounded through the cavern as she stepped into the crowd. "Are you drow, or iblith?!"
"Malla Imrae," a male close to her whimpered.
She turned a cold gaze at him. "Mithykyl and the beholder Hive Mother have betrayed the Mistresses! They are awaiting outside, waiting for the drow to fall! Are you going to allow that?!"
Another deep rumble crossed through the cavern. Little sister.
She turned her gaze to her insufferable brother. "The males among you," she yelled out, "Will go under Solaufein's command. The females, under mine. You are drow. Put yourselves in order. You know the price of failure."
Another deep rumble; but then a louder sound. "Despana!" she heard. "Despana will reign supreme! Despana!"
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When the gates of the outpost of Ust Natha, torn apart by the spells of sundering, disappeared, what spilled out of them was not a chaotic horde of people escaping a disaster; but two columns of orderly troops awaiting fight, and death.
Ust Natha, the collapsing cave, was located off a central cavern in the Underdark; it was through this central cavern that several passageways led, to the Kuo-Toan caves; to Ched Nasad; to the surface— And also, closer by, to the side caves where the beholders and the mind flayers of Sendai's army had been quartered. As familiar as the other creatures of the Underdark of what the deep sighs and groans of the Ust Natha bedrock meant, these aberrant, horrifying, rarely-seen-by-surfacers, xenophobic, half-mythical monsters now spilled out of the fissures; with as little loyalty to the drow as the drow had for each other, and as much bloodthirstiness. The illithid were here for a feast; the beholders— Who knew what the beholders wanted? But the deaths of those who fell to them would be equally unpleasant: petrified, disintegrated, turned against each other, or, plainly, killed.
The battle plan was this: on the beholder side, to seek out the Hive Mother; beholders, as a rule, were as hateful towards each other as they were towards the other species, and, devoid of central command, would fall into disarray. On the illithid side, plainly, to kill; preferably from a distance. There were rumours that Mithykyl had brought along an Elder Brain; but the truth of this talk rested with Sendai, and Sendai was now dead.
The first contact was made under the giant soulstone that graced the midpoint of the central cavern; a scouting troop of the drow under Sarevok's command came across several gauth beholderkin—
The power that she had within herself sang again; she walked across the battlefield, cursing the illithid and the beholders, flinging spells, releasing her people, strengthening them, hitting, cutting, ordering, shooting, stabbing— Wave after wave, the adulation, adoration of the drow around her reinforced her, and she reinforced it; and them. They loved her, the Malla Imrae, the Handmaiden; she loved them back. The tentacled devourers attempted their mind assaults in vain where she was concerned; or the beholders, the eye rays: she ignored the former, and reflected the latter back to their authors. She didn't even bother to hide her bow, or her sword and daggers, under the illusion of a crossbow, and shield-and-mace.
Wave after wave, the mass of the drow around her moved; attacked; died.
The death; the blood; the blood; the chaos; the power.
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When it was done; when they had cleaned out the central cavern and some troops entered the side chambers and killed off the stragglers; when it was done, and, in her long cloak, she was stepping over the bodies, inspecting the battlefield with Taso Kala, the priestess, by her side, healing the wounded; when it was done, and the blood of the fallen soaked the ground and made the water in the nearby stream, briefly, run red— Then, there were fewer than a hundred drow left; and she realised that, sometime during the battle, the side cave containing the city had, indeed, collapsed, and she had not even noticed that. The survivors were, she felt proud to see, mostly Despana people.
Taso Kala, by her side, was saying a thing, a trivial thing or another, when she heard Sarevok laugh— Well, sister. Do you still maintain that a personal murder is better than a war?
She turned to him, quickly, across the battlefield; his drow illusion was as barely maintaining itself as hers. At least they won't turn on Amn.
More likely, they will turn on us, he noted. I don't see Lloth suffering our presence much longer.
I agree. Let's go.
That was not to be so, however; suddenly, a wave passed among the dark elves; and they started to move in the direction of the soulstone. They gave her way, as she passed through; but still moved forward.
Adalon-as-Phaere stood there, in her deep, adamantine shawl, her whip, her long, claw-like fingernails, and no expression on her face.
Her brother and she both started; they pushed through the crowd; and once in the clearing by the soulstone, knelt and lowered their heads. "I offer this victory to you, Matron Mother," she said, as Imrae. "Your enemy are dead."
Adalon eyed her coldly. "Yes," she said. "I do think it is high time to dispel the illusion."
The betrayal rather did dispel whatever remains of an illusion of power she might still have. "Here?" she stammered out, before stilling herself; by her, her brother, heedless of the role of a drow male, demanded, "Are you insane, dragon? Four of your children still live."
Adalon nodded; and, not a moment later, the three of them stood there, in the centre of the crowd of drow: a silver dragon, and under her wings, two rivvin, with drawn arms.
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Adalon, if she wanted to, could hold a crowd's attention as well; she was, after all, a silver dragon.
"The Phaere Despana that you thought you knew is dead, dark ones," she spoke, in her deep voice of a thousand underwater bells. "She died four years ago, in the explosion created by the elf Irenicus. I took her place."
Imoen felt the network of ioun stones resettle around her, much shorter now, hair. They could get away now, she and her brother; the drow would hunt them for the insult, but they really wouldn't be the first— Even in the society that prided itself on its lack of the concept of trust, the faces of the Captain Egeissag and the priestess Taso Kala were too full of disbelief.
The latter was the first to react. "Blasphemy!" she yelled out. "The Goddess would never allow it!"
There was a brief silence; but then, besides Imoen, Sarevok, suddenly, laughed. "The Goddess that allowed a half-breed to nest among you?" he said, sheathing his sword. "Believe me, she would. That half-decayed outpost of yours? You have fallen out of her favour and interest long ago, fools."
Suddenly, she realised— For the drow's sake, they needed to hear it from a female. She sheathed her own sword. "Believe my brother. When it comes to gods, we know what we are talking about."
"B-but!" Taso Kala started; and so, she gave her a cold gaze. "Your powers? Perfunctory. Try—" She waved her hand around. "—Resurrecting someone, if there is someone you care enough about. Your mate. Your daughter. Why do you think Qilue went mad?" She looked around, at the dark faces framed in white, purple and red. "Believe us. We can feel it."
"You!" the priestess yelled; but Egeissag next to her frowned. "You— You are the same as the Mistress? You are the children of that rivvin god?"
"Yes," she said easily, for the thousandth time in her life. "The rivvin god of Murder."
"Then— The power we felt during the battle?"
"That was us, yes," Sarevok interrupted, bored. He turned to the dragon behind them. "Four children of yours are still alive. Why are you doing this to them?"
"They will either kill off one another soon, or will be hunted down for sport, or will perish to the monsters," Imoen added. "If they go to the surface, the elves and the humans will take care of them." She thought for a moment. "Same applies to us, really. If my brother's wrong and it's us you have beef with, after all."
Adalon, the dragon, looked at them, from the one to another. "Do you take me for one so foolish, or so vicious, that I would choose not understand that?"
Imoen, despite herself, started. "Then what are you doing here?"
The silver eyes ignored her; instead, the dragon looked back to the drow. "You," she said. "Dark ones. To walk apart from the House and the Queen is to walk into the grave. Is what this human said true? Is this what you are going to do now? Die?"
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Predictably, it was a priestess who answered first. "No! If we hunt you down; if we take revenge— then it is still possible... It may be possible..." She halted. Behind her, the crowd murmured; a single crossbow bolt fired; Adalon snorted at it, lightly, through her nostrils, and it disappeared. The crowd took a step back.
Suddenly, her brother's eyes glimmered. "Priestess," he intimated, looking in the direction of the woman who had shouted, "Do you not think that it will be easier for you to hunt us down if you are in our company?"
Imoen blinked, and looked at him. "Oh, no," she said, switching to human. "No. No, no, no. We are not doing that again, brother."
"Again?" Adalon took interest, behind them; but she ignored her. "What are we going to do with them? It's not just a single half-orc this time."
He looked at her, serious now. "If you are forgetting, sister, we are now going to a war. Abazigal has an army, as well."
"How are we going to feed them? Gear them up?" She looked at the drow, now conferring between themselves. "All their weapons will stop working soon after we get to the surface!"
"Imoen," he argued. "Other mercenary companies make do, somehow."
"'Mercenary company'?! Is that what you call them now?!"
"Well, sister," her brother shrugged. "It's a better word than 'refugees'."
Between Adalon and Sarevok, she knew the matter was lost then; she was outvoted; she turned to the most senior female among the living drow. "Taso Kala," she said, curtly, switching back to drow. "The foolish and unwary find surprises and among them, waiting death. I am the Daughter of Murder. Are you ready for the ultimate betrayal?"
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"I really hope that your crash course in cross-cultural understanding works both ways, Adalon," she muttered at the dragon; in the distance, Sarevok was ordering their new troops around. He already loved his latest toy, she could see that: bandits, goblins, orcs or even the Shadow Thieves could not compare with the sheer bloodthirstiness, fanaticism and efficiency of the drow. She looked at the woman next to her curiously. "What did you do that, for, anyway? Why?"
Adalon, in her elven guise now, shrugged lightly. "It pains me to say that, but... Sendai's plan worked better than probably even she had expected. The young of my kind are accustomed to treat those among whom they are raised as their own clan. My children have... gotten used to seeing those of the dark around. They missed them."
The mother's words could not have possibly found a worse audience: for she was speaking to one raised by two foster fathers; who had a sibling of her own choosing; another dead, and yet alive; and a hundred she did not choose nor kill herself— But she tried to find some compassion in herself for that vastly different experience. "I'm... I'm sorry," the Daughter of Murder said.
Then, as she realised a thing, she must ask, "Does this mean that you will be coming with us?"
A flash crossed the inscrutable silver eyes. "Yes," Adalon said. "My children have gotten used to them... and I have gotten used to you, dragon-slayers. I cannot leave you alone with that other half-breed. And his army."
End of Part VIII.I: The Game of Kings, Part I.
