A/N: Aylena visits the Abyss in this one. How fun.
Disclaimer in prologue. Drow still not mine.
Chapter 4
Dreams of Destiny
"Elamshin!" (Goddess-touched destiny!)
-Battle-cry of the kyorlen phor l'shar.
Aylena found herself falling through mist. She struggled, kicking against the strands of an invisible web surrounding her, and found herself standing on a layer of mud under a shifting cloak of fog.
Her eyes were open-or were they shut? Aylena experimented with opening and closing them a few times. Nothing seemed to make a difference. Whether they were open or shut, she still saw the same gray-black landscape before her.
Aylena drew in a breath. That little difference could start all the fear in the world inside her head, did she let it.
So the important thing was not to let it.
She started forward, picking her boots free of the sucking mud and ignoring the clinging pall of the mist. She was in some part of the Abyss, she knew that much, and she had only to find the goddess. She knew that Lloth often set such tests for her priestesses. It was only a matter of passing it.
Aylena had to admit that she hadn't expected to pass such a test when she called on the goddess to help her mother, but she did her best to put her clamoring questions out of her mind. She could ask Matron Zirrin such questions, and the Matron would often explain. But then, the Matron was very indulgent of her youngest daughter. Even as she would have liked to know more, Aylena knew that.
And Lloth was not the Matron.
Something moved off to her left. Aylena paused, her hand resting on her belt pouch, squinting into the mist. It parted, and a creature like a half-melted stick of wax came towards her. A long mouth opened within it, and the almost elven voice of the yochlol spoke from the gap.
"Why have you come?"
Aylena's heart pounded and sang in her ears. She had never faced one of the goddess's handmaidens before. Still, that was no reason to panic. She did her best to keep her voice calm and measured, concentrating especially hard on not slurring her words due to her disfigurement. "My mother, Matron Zirrin Elosthan, lies near death. I have come to ask the goddess's aid in healing her."
"And who are you?"
Aylena hid her surprise as best she could. She would have assumed that the yochlol knew who she was. Of course, perhaps the handmaiden did, and this was a test that Lloth wanted to make her undergo for some obscure reason.
"Aylena Elosthan. Her youngest daughter."
The handmaiden paused, and Aylena almost thought she could feel its mind reaching out, touching and tasting the goddess's perhaps. Aylena trembled as she thought of that. To be so thoroughly in Lloth's presence was something to be envied and longed for, something that she would give much to have when she died.
"You are in the highest favor of Lloth," said the yochlol at last. "And your Matron floats near death. I will give you help, if you can pass the test." Its half-melted eyes once again focused on her, and it said, "There is a price for the aid."
"I know it," Aylena answered, remembering the legends she had heard. Sometimes the priestess who came asking for help had to kill someone else dear to her. Sometimes she had to kill herself. Sometimes she had to give up a treasured possession. Aylena wondered which of those prices she would have to pay.
"You must answer a riddle."
Aylena breathed a little more easily, and her confidence came swelling up in her. True, her training wasn't completed, but she had dared to race ahead and do many things that only high priestesses could normally do. She had studied many more things than a normal trainee priestess, as well. "I will answer the riddle," she said.
"To whom do you owe the more loyalty?" asked the yochlol. "The Matron, or Lloth?"
Aylena's breath froze in her throat. The yochlol stood looking at her, waiting for the answer. Aylena closed her eyes, and felt the sweat on her brow freeze as well. This level of the Abyss was colder than it seemed.
She knew what the required answer should be. Every priestess's highest allegiance was to the Spider Queen, and if Lloth commanded her to turn on her own Matron, then the priestess would have no choice. But surely Lloth could look within her heart, and see that Aylena was loyal to the Matron as well. And Aylena couldn't weigh her own loyalties in the way that the gaze of supernatural creatures like the yochlol could. She couldn't know for certain if she was really more loyal to the Matron or the Spider Queen. And even if she gave the right answer, Lloth might declare against Aylena in her caprice. That was the kind of goddess she was.
Then Aylena paused, her heart slowing.
The yochlol hadn't asked to whom she had the greater loyalty, had she? She had asked to whom Aylena owed the greater loyalty.
Aylena's head rose, and her eyes fixed on the yochlol. She knew she was smiling, but she couldn't help it. "The Spider Queen," she said.
The yochlol barely waited before extending her great tentacles and draping them over Aylena's shoulders. Aylena barely breathed as she stared into the melted eyes. After all, the yochlol might decide to tear her apart if she thought that Aylena wasn't high enough in the favor of Lloth. Or Lloth might be displeased or piqued with Aylena's cleverness and have given her permission to eat Aylena.
But instead, the handmaiden said, "The goddess has said that you are correct, and I will return no later than the moment you began to pray, to help the Matron."
Aylena's head dropped, and she let out a breath in spite of herself.
"But first, Lloth would speak to you," added the yochlol, and with no more warning than that, her form transformed into that of a great spider, with the head of a beautiful drow woman. Two of her legs rested on Aylena's shoulders, and her face smiled with cruel triumph.
Aylena collapsed to her knees in the mud. She couldn't help it, any more than she had been able to resist smiling when she gave the answer to the riddle. The sense of the divine presence was much more overwhelming here, in the Spider Queen's own realm, then it was in a dream.
"All praise to Lloth," she murmured, hoping that the goddess wouldn't choose to simply kill her, perhaps decapitating her with a sweep of one wicked leg.
"Are you only saying that because you know it's expected, or because you mean it?" asked the goddess, her voice gentle with mockery, beautiful and cruel as falling stone.
"I am saying it to keep myself safe," said Aylena, her head rising again. She felt as though she were one of the duergar she had seen captive at a fair not long ago, strings strung through their bodies to make them dance at the slightest hand movement of their drow captors. "I love you, my goddess, but I do not trust you."
Lloth's laughter came again, rich and sweet, and in spite of herself Aylena gloried in it.
"Do you know why I have let you live?" Lloth asked, when her laughter died. "Despite your disfigurement, despite your recklessness, despite your little blasphemies?"
"No," whispered Aylena. In truth, she had always thought that she amused the goddess, and that Lloth would kill her when she tired of Aylena. But to actually learn the reason...Aylena found that she was trembling. Her body flushed with heat, and there was wetness on her thighs.
"You have a great destiny, a great elamshin," said Lloth. "And when your Matron bore you, I felt that destiny, and chose to look into the future. It was clouded. But I was able to feel that you would strike a devastating blow to a drow goddess."
"But, my lady-"
"I chose to take the risk," Lloth interrupted. "I will suck you dry like a fly in a web if you oppose me, and I will do the same thing if you no longer amuse me. Or do you really think that I will not do it, simply because you amuse me?"
"No," said Aylena.
Lloth laughed again, the sound softer than the rubbing of her legs or the squelch of the mud as something heavy, perhaps another handmaiden, passed close to them. "Stay alive, little fly," she said, dropping her legs from Aylena's shoulders. "And go back to your Matron. She will be grateful for the loyalty that you have shown her this day." She paused, scarlet eyes staring into Aylena's. "But never forget where you true loyalty lies."
"No," said Aylena, and fought the urge to lower her face into the mud. She had the strange feeling that that wouldn't really amuse Lloth. "I will never forget. But will the Matron know of this?"
"It is my choice whether to reveal this conversation to her, or not," said Lloth easily.
"Of course." Aylena cast her eyes down. "I did not mean to offend, my Queen."
"You nearly did," said Lloth, and then waved a leg easily. The yochlol who had spoken with Aylena appeared again. "Here is your helper. Take her back with you, and tell your Matron that she must suffer the touch of the tentacles."
"I will."
Lloth nodded to her, and then turned and stepped through the darkness and the mist and the mud, vanishing in seconds.
Aylena shook for a moment, then turned and gripped one of the yochlol's tentacles, falling through the mists of her mind into the Underdark again.
*****
"Matron."
Matron Zirrin turned her head, the scarlet in her eyes flaring as she saw the yochlol. "Aylena, what have you done?" she whispered.
"Matron, you must suffer the handmaiden to put her tentacles upon you."
Zirrin flinched before she nodded, and Aylena wondered at it. Was her Matron that squeamish, or was there some other reason that she didn't want the yochlol touching her?
Whatever the truth of it, she waited as the handmaiden draped her tentacles over her body, and shuddered only a little at the feel of the skin. Aylena watched as another burst of heat swelled in her Matron's body, and guessed the yochlol would do something about it when the heat was at its height. Curious beyond measure, Aylena leaned forward and put her hand on the yochlol's shoulder, or at least on the handmaiden's skin, just above the tentacle's beginning.
Exultation swelled within her. She sensed the approach of the heat, as though it were a long distance away and swooping closer through tunnels. She could feel the yochlol calling on the power of the goddess, and then Lloth's will was over everything, a pulsing dark presence.
The dark presence met the heat.
The heat dissipated.
Aylena cried out as the mingled powers washed and danced through her blood. It was a very quick battle, as she had not doubted that it would be. After all, no mere drow-made poison could stand up to the will of Lloth, especially not channeled through one of Lloth's highest servants. But the sheer sensation of it was something all over again. For just a moment, Aylena soared on wings like a cave-bat, swam through dark waters with the ease of an aboleth, and sang with the stone like a pech. She was free, ultimately free, and everything was open to her.
Almost everything. There was a disturbing, silvery presence just above her, under the burning pressure that Aylena knew must be the sun of the old stories. And this presence was determined to keep her from spreading further. Aylena found herself hating the silvery one, and she would have cast herself like an arrow at it if she could.
But she was needed back in the Matron's bedchamber, and with some reluctance Aylena opened her eyes and sat up. The yochlol was gone, and her hand rested on the Matron's belly. Quickly, Aylena withdrew her hand and bowed her head.
"You brought a yochlol to heal me."
Aylena shuddered a little at the sound of Matron Zirrin's voice. If the Matron wasn't back at full strength quite yet, she was approaching it rapidly. "Yes, Matron."
"Another time you will tell me how you accomplished the deed." Zirrin had already moved on. "Who is in the conspiracy against me?"
"Sielza, Renorth, and Matron Zenoria would all have killed me," said Aylena.
"Kelydda?"
"I did not see her."
The Matron nodded. "We must assume that she is with them until we learn otherwise," she said, and Aylena was a little surprised to see that she was smiling widely. She caught Aylena's eye, and inclined her head.
"They think they have won," she said softly, voices rumbling as sharply as falling stalactites. "They do not know the half of it."
Aylena shivered in delightful anticipation. "You will make them driders?" she asked softly, naming the most appropriate punishment she could think of for defying a Matron.
Zirrin's eyes flared. In that moment, she looked as full as deadly as Lloth. If she had been in the Abyss with Aylena, looking as she did then, Aylena would not have found the riddle so easy to answer.
"They will wish that they are driders when I am done with them."
Disclaimer in prologue. Drow still not mine.
Chapter 4
Dreams of Destiny
"Elamshin!" (Goddess-touched destiny!)
-Battle-cry of the kyorlen phor l'shar.
Aylena found herself falling through mist. She struggled, kicking against the strands of an invisible web surrounding her, and found herself standing on a layer of mud under a shifting cloak of fog.
Her eyes were open-or were they shut? Aylena experimented with opening and closing them a few times. Nothing seemed to make a difference. Whether they were open or shut, she still saw the same gray-black landscape before her.
Aylena drew in a breath. That little difference could start all the fear in the world inside her head, did she let it.
So the important thing was not to let it.
She started forward, picking her boots free of the sucking mud and ignoring the clinging pall of the mist. She was in some part of the Abyss, she knew that much, and she had only to find the goddess. She knew that Lloth often set such tests for her priestesses. It was only a matter of passing it.
Aylena had to admit that she hadn't expected to pass such a test when she called on the goddess to help her mother, but she did her best to put her clamoring questions out of her mind. She could ask Matron Zirrin such questions, and the Matron would often explain. But then, the Matron was very indulgent of her youngest daughter. Even as she would have liked to know more, Aylena knew that.
And Lloth was not the Matron.
Something moved off to her left. Aylena paused, her hand resting on her belt pouch, squinting into the mist. It parted, and a creature like a half-melted stick of wax came towards her. A long mouth opened within it, and the almost elven voice of the yochlol spoke from the gap.
"Why have you come?"
Aylena's heart pounded and sang in her ears. She had never faced one of the goddess's handmaidens before. Still, that was no reason to panic. She did her best to keep her voice calm and measured, concentrating especially hard on not slurring her words due to her disfigurement. "My mother, Matron Zirrin Elosthan, lies near death. I have come to ask the goddess's aid in healing her."
"And who are you?"
Aylena hid her surprise as best she could. She would have assumed that the yochlol knew who she was. Of course, perhaps the handmaiden did, and this was a test that Lloth wanted to make her undergo for some obscure reason.
"Aylena Elosthan. Her youngest daughter."
The handmaiden paused, and Aylena almost thought she could feel its mind reaching out, touching and tasting the goddess's perhaps. Aylena trembled as she thought of that. To be so thoroughly in Lloth's presence was something to be envied and longed for, something that she would give much to have when she died.
"You are in the highest favor of Lloth," said the yochlol at last. "And your Matron floats near death. I will give you help, if you can pass the test." Its half-melted eyes once again focused on her, and it said, "There is a price for the aid."
"I know it," Aylena answered, remembering the legends she had heard. Sometimes the priestess who came asking for help had to kill someone else dear to her. Sometimes she had to kill herself. Sometimes she had to give up a treasured possession. Aylena wondered which of those prices she would have to pay.
"You must answer a riddle."
Aylena breathed a little more easily, and her confidence came swelling up in her. True, her training wasn't completed, but she had dared to race ahead and do many things that only high priestesses could normally do. She had studied many more things than a normal trainee priestess, as well. "I will answer the riddle," she said.
"To whom do you owe the more loyalty?" asked the yochlol. "The Matron, or Lloth?"
Aylena's breath froze in her throat. The yochlol stood looking at her, waiting for the answer. Aylena closed her eyes, and felt the sweat on her brow freeze as well. This level of the Abyss was colder than it seemed.
She knew what the required answer should be. Every priestess's highest allegiance was to the Spider Queen, and if Lloth commanded her to turn on her own Matron, then the priestess would have no choice. But surely Lloth could look within her heart, and see that Aylena was loyal to the Matron as well. And Aylena couldn't weigh her own loyalties in the way that the gaze of supernatural creatures like the yochlol could. She couldn't know for certain if she was really more loyal to the Matron or the Spider Queen. And even if she gave the right answer, Lloth might declare against Aylena in her caprice. That was the kind of goddess she was.
Then Aylena paused, her heart slowing.
The yochlol hadn't asked to whom she had the greater loyalty, had she? She had asked to whom Aylena owed the greater loyalty.
Aylena's head rose, and her eyes fixed on the yochlol. She knew she was smiling, but she couldn't help it. "The Spider Queen," she said.
The yochlol barely waited before extending her great tentacles and draping them over Aylena's shoulders. Aylena barely breathed as she stared into the melted eyes. After all, the yochlol might decide to tear her apart if she thought that Aylena wasn't high enough in the favor of Lloth. Or Lloth might be displeased or piqued with Aylena's cleverness and have given her permission to eat Aylena.
But instead, the handmaiden said, "The goddess has said that you are correct, and I will return no later than the moment you began to pray, to help the Matron."
Aylena's head dropped, and she let out a breath in spite of herself.
"But first, Lloth would speak to you," added the yochlol, and with no more warning than that, her form transformed into that of a great spider, with the head of a beautiful drow woman. Two of her legs rested on Aylena's shoulders, and her face smiled with cruel triumph.
Aylena collapsed to her knees in the mud. She couldn't help it, any more than she had been able to resist smiling when she gave the answer to the riddle. The sense of the divine presence was much more overwhelming here, in the Spider Queen's own realm, then it was in a dream.
"All praise to Lloth," she murmured, hoping that the goddess wouldn't choose to simply kill her, perhaps decapitating her with a sweep of one wicked leg.
"Are you only saying that because you know it's expected, or because you mean it?" asked the goddess, her voice gentle with mockery, beautiful and cruel as falling stone.
"I am saying it to keep myself safe," said Aylena, her head rising again. She felt as though she were one of the duergar she had seen captive at a fair not long ago, strings strung through their bodies to make them dance at the slightest hand movement of their drow captors. "I love you, my goddess, but I do not trust you."
Lloth's laughter came again, rich and sweet, and in spite of herself Aylena gloried in it.
"Do you know why I have let you live?" Lloth asked, when her laughter died. "Despite your disfigurement, despite your recklessness, despite your little blasphemies?"
"No," whispered Aylena. In truth, she had always thought that she amused the goddess, and that Lloth would kill her when she tired of Aylena. But to actually learn the reason...Aylena found that she was trembling. Her body flushed with heat, and there was wetness on her thighs.
"You have a great destiny, a great elamshin," said Lloth. "And when your Matron bore you, I felt that destiny, and chose to look into the future. It was clouded. But I was able to feel that you would strike a devastating blow to a drow goddess."
"But, my lady-"
"I chose to take the risk," Lloth interrupted. "I will suck you dry like a fly in a web if you oppose me, and I will do the same thing if you no longer amuse me. Or do you really think that I will not do it, simply because you amuse me?"
"No," said Aylena.
Lloth laughed again, the sound softer than the rubbing of her legs or the squelch of the mud as something heavy, perhaps another handmaiden, passed close to them. "Stay alive, little fly," she said, dropping her legs from Aylena's shoulders. "And go back to your Matron. She will be grateful for the loyalty that you have shown her this day." She paused, scarlet eyes staring into Aylena's. "But never forget where you true loyalty lies."
"No," said Aylena, and fought the urge to lower her face into the mud. She had the strange feeling that that wouldn't really amuse Lloth. "I will never forget. But will the Matron know of this?"
"It is my choice whether to reveal this conversation to her, or not," said Lloth easily.
"Of course." Aylena cast her eyes down. "I did not mean to offend, my Queen."
"You nearly did," said Lloth, and then waved a leg easily. The yochlol who had spoken with Aylena appeared again. "Here is your helper. Take her back with you, and tell your Matron that she must suffer the touch of the tentacles."
"I will."
Lloth nodded to her, and then turned and stepped through the darkness and the mist and the mud, vanishing in seconds.
Aylena shook for a moment, then turned and gripped one of the yochlol's tentacles, falling through the mists of her mind into the Underdark again.
*****
"Matron."
Matron Zirrin turned her head, the scarlet in her eyes flaring as she saw the yochlol. "Aylena, what have you done?" she whispered.
"Matron, you must suffer the handmaiden to put her tentacles upon you."
Zirrin flinched before she nodded, and Aylena wondered at it. Was her Matron that squeamish, or was there some other reason that she didn't want the yochlol touching her?
Whatever the truth of it, she waited as the handmaiden draped her tentacles over her body, and shuddered only a little at the feel of the skin. Aylena watched as another burst of heat swelled in her Matron's body, and guessed the yochlol would do something about it when the heat was at its height. Curious beyond measure, Aylena leaned forward and put her hand on the yochlol's shoulder, or at least on the handmaiden's skin, just above the tentacle's beginning.
Exultation swelled within her. She sensed the approach of the heat, as though it were a long distance away and swooping closer through tunnels. She could feel the yochlol calling on the power of the goddess, and then Lloth's will was over everything, a pulsing dark presence.
The dark presence met the heat.
The heat dissipated.
Aylena cried out as the mingled powers washed and danced through her blood. It was a very quick battle, as she had not doubted that it would be. After all, no mere drow-made poison could stand up to the will of Lloth, especially not channeled through one of Lloth's highest servants. But the sheer sensation of it was something all over again. For just a moment, Aylena soared on wings like a cave-bat, swam through dark waters with the ease of an aboleth, and sang with the stone like a pech. She was free, ultimately free, and everything was open to her.
Almost everything. There was a disturbing, silvery presence just above her, under the burning pressure that Aylena knew must be the sun of the old stories. And this presence was determined to keep her from spreading further. Aylena found herself hating the silvery one, and she would have cast herself like an arrow at it if she could.
But she was needed back in the Matron's bedchamber, and with some reluctance Aylena opened her eyes and sat up. The yochlol was gone, and her hand rested on the Matron's belly. Quickly, Aylena withdrew her hand and bowed her head.
"You brought a yochlol to heal me."
Aylena shuddered a little at the sound of Matron Zirrin's voice. If the Matron wasn't back at full strength quite yet, she was approaching it rapidly. "Yes, Matron."
"Another time you will tell me how you accomplished the deed." Zirrin had already moved on. "Who is in the conspiracy against me?"
"Sielza, Renorth, and Matron Zenoria would all have killed me," said Aylena.
"Kelydda?"
"I did not see her."
The Matron nodded. "We must assume that she is with them until we learn otherwise," she said, and Aylena was a little surprised to see that she was smiling widely. She caught Aylena's eye, and inclined her head.
"They think they have won," she said softly, voices rumbling as sharply as falling stalactites. "They do not know the half of it."
Aylena shivered in delightful anticipation. "You will make them driders?" she asked softly, naming the most appropriate punishment she could think of for defying a Matron.
Zirrin's eyes flared. In that moment, she looked as full as deadly as Lloth. If she had been in the Abyss with Aylena, looking as she did then, Aylena would not have found the riddle so easy to answer.
"They will wish that they are driders when I am done with them."