V
"It's time to wake up, little girl."
The words seemed to float to her from somewhere far away, echoing through endless caverns before they finally reached her. Valtaya could not identify the voice or where she was, or even if she was awake or unconscious.
"Druce?" the young noble asked, her voice weak and almost inaudible in the darkness. There was a low, melodic laugh somewhere closer to her, but it still seemed to be very distant.
The resounding slap across her face was much closer.
Valtaya awoke instantly as she toppled to the ground, trying desperately to get to her feet and resume her escape. Her attempts proved useless, however, as she quickly found her hands and feet bound together by sticky strands of webbing, leaving her completely helpless in the face of her tormentors. Still the young druid tried to kick free of the webbing that trussed her, frantic to escape her hideous tormentors, the demons of elven legend known as the drow.
A flurry of kicks suddenly landed in her unprotected chest, blasting the wind from her lungs and quickly ceasing her struggles. Valtaya inhaled on reflex, gasping for breath, but took in nothing but ash as she landed face first in the cinders covering the ground. Choking and coughing uncontrollably on the soot, Valtaya barely felt herself lifted roughly back into a kneeling position. Although swirls of color danced across her vision and stole her sight, Valtaya could feel one of her diabolic captors squatting in front of her.
"Try not to make me upset," the dark elf said, his smooth, melodic voice taking a definite sinister edge. "While I am not allowed to kill you, nothing was said about how much I could beat you."
Valtaya's vision finally cleared, and once again she found herself face to face with the malicious drow that had originally captured her. For a long moment she locked eyes with the monster in front of her, mustering her courage in the face of such a demon. She could not show fear to such a perversion of the elven race. The drow had been forced below ground millennia ago for their crazed, bloody druidic rituals that had called for elven sacrifices and demonic counsel. They were never supposed to have survived their underground exile. Despite her best efforts, however, the young druid could barely face the burning crimson orbs of the dark elf leaning menacingly over her.
"What do you want with me?" Valtaya managed to ask, certain that her voice did not mask the terror coursing through her.
"I want to kill you," the drow answered with a chuckle. His amusement with the situation seemed to grow with each word, until he was practically bursting into a fit of laughter "We all want to kill you. For now, the question is how we want to kill you!"
"Cadwared!" a second male voice snapped, just beyond the leather clad drow. Cadwared, if that was truly his name, turned at the sound of the voice, allowing Valtaya a clear glimpse of the newcomer. He too was a drow, with ebon skin and frightening blood colored eyes, but he was taller than the warrior and dressed in scintillating black robes beneath a cloak almost identical to the warrior's cape. The newcomer's hair was also carefully trimmed to include several sharp angles and a long mane, but his hair held a noticeably silver tone even in the darkness. The leather clad drow stood and quickly reported to the apparent leader's side, and for a minute or so they argued in their own language. Finally, Cadwared and his superior turned back to the bound surface elf.
"We could kill her now, and be done with it," Cadwared stated, switching intentionally back to the Argent language as the two returned to her. Cadwared turned a particularly vile grin on her as his eyes swept over her. "We have our fun and leave her here. There will be other females to capture and sacrifice."
"Talaith wants this one," the robe wearing drow decided, looking down at his prisoner. "She is of noble birth, and she wields the power of their Mother. She is what we need."
Cadwared dropped his eyes to the ground in a show of disappointment. Valtaya closed her eyes, relieved that Cadwared would not be able to have his way but fearful of why they wanted her.
"Unless," the robe wearing drow continued after a pause, "she becomes too unruly. If she resists too much, she will become a liability. Then she is yours."
Valtaya's eyes snapped open at that. The robe wearing drow smiled coldly at her, satisfied with his warning for her to behave. Cadwared's spirits also lifted at the prospect, and he knelt down once again in front of her. He raised one hand to her face, but instead of a rough slap the drow gently brushed back her hair. Valtaya's skin crawled at the horrifying show of affection, but the robe wearing drow's icy stare, practically daring her to try to resist his subordinate's advance, kept her from trying to pull back from the touch.
"Please," Cadwared whispered as he leaned in close to her. Valtaya shut her eyes tightly, trying with all her might to hold back the tremor of fear running through her. "Please try to escape. I look forward to the chase, and to the capture."
Cadwared lingered a moment more, but thankfully the dark elf retreated. Valtaya opened her eyes again to see the leather clad elf walking silently away through the ashes, disappearing into a clump of blackened underbrush. The robed drow still watched over her, however, and as Cadwared disappeared he moved closer to her.
"You are frightened of us, faerie," he said, spitting out the word as if it were a curse. "And you should be."
Valtaya simply turned away from the drow. The show of defiance seemed to do nothing more than amuse her tormentor, as he let out a low chuckle.
"Let us be civilized for a moment," the robed drow suggested, his tone growing slightly more amiable. "My name is Fychan of House Evnissien. Who might you be, noble?"
Valtaya looked back to the drow, but said nothing. Although she wanted to voice her defiance and her hatred of the villain facing her, her fear of what the drow might do to her held her in check. Fychan, for his part, simply shook his head at the display.
"Very well, faerie," the drow said. He leaned down over her, his eyes taking on an almost demonic light as he held her gaze. "I am going to ask you a more important question," he started, his growing terrifying, "and you are going to answer it. Do you understand?"
Valtaya intended not to answer her captor, but she found herself nodding in fearful acquiescence to the drow. With her display of frightened obedience, the dark elf's more amiable mood returned.
"One of your companions also escaped," Fychan explained. "Why don't you tell me, where might he have gone?"
It felt like hours since he had taken refuge in the stream bed.
The fireball had scorched him badly and thrown him into the shallow, tepid water, but Fife had survived the vicious assault that had killed the shadow mastiff and nearly incinerated him. The water had quite possibly saved his life; his hair, once held back in a thick braid, had been burned off almost to his scalp, and even with the water immediately dousing the flames that had covered him blisters had begun to form up and down his left side. The elf had managed to keep hold of his long sword when the fireball had hit, but his short sword had been thrown clear of his hand. Fife's magical long bow had also come with him, as it was slung over his shoulder during the attack, but the ranger was also fearful of the condition it might be in after taking the full heat of a fireball and the full impact of the elf's weight when he had landed in the stream.
The water was just deep enough to cover him and allow the ashes to float back over him, giving Fife the opportunity to hide while he tried to figure out his next course of action. He had seen Dolan, Keridwyn, and Hefydd all fall in battle, while Druce had already been badly wounded by the initial assault. He had not seen any of what had happened to Valtaya, but her proximity to Druce when the lightning bolt hit meant that she too had likely perished in the attack. Already badly wounded and certain to be killed if he rose above the water's surface, Fife had done the only thing he could do; remain hidden. For what seemed like half the night he kept underwater, poking only his nose and mouth out of the ash covered surface to breathe. Somehow he had escaped detection after the battle, but his brush with death and his seemingly miraculous evasion did little to quell the thought that he had been a coward.
Fife finally sat up, holding his sword tentatively in front of him as he surveyed the battleground. For a moment he could see nothing in the pall of smoke and the darkness, but then he began to make out objects. Keridwyn he found first, not far to his south, hacked and mangled almost beyond recognition. Fife located Hefydd next, but only by the blasted, charred body's location. The lightning bolt had removed any sort of identifiable features from the corpse. The spot where Dolan had fallen was now a smoking circle, and the lump of charcoal in the center of that circle was presumably the unfortunate ranger. Druce, the powerful druid, Fife found last, and only after he had left the stream; a smoldering crater showed where the flame strikes and fireballs had ended the druid's life and reduced the body to little more than ash and charred bones.
Fife wanted nothing more than to rest, to mourn the loss of his companions, but he knew he had much to do before he could properly pay his respects to those had had abandoned. If their deaths were to mean anything, all of Argent had to be aware of the shadowy attackers that came with the fires. The ranger checked his bow first, thankfully finding it intact and ready for use, then hastily searched the battlefield for what supplies he could salvage. His short sword he found quickly, half buried beneath the ashes where he and the mastiff had fought, but his pack, exposed when Hefydd's magical cottage had disappeared, had been incinerated during the fight. Finally, with one last, mournful glance to his slain companions, Fife set out to the south, determined to run all night and into the next day if that was what he had to do to reach Ceallai before his attackers realized that they had left one elf alive.
Several footprints in the ash stopped his run almost before it started.
Four sets of tracks led to the south, catching and holding the ranger's attention. Judging by the distance between footprints, all four had been running at a dead sprint, but at first there appeared to be no reason for such haste. One set of tracks came from a huge dog, not unlike the shadow mastiff he had fought earlier in the night. The other three sets, however, baffled the ranger, as they could not have been made by anything other than an elf.
Slowly Fife followed the tracks along the ground, but almost as soon as he had picked up the trail the prints began to separate. Still moving at top speed, the four seemed to be spreading out, trying to flank something between them or possibly herd it in some direction. Several times Fife crossed between the two sets, but after his third cross of the bare ground between the tracks he stopped ands shook his head. The four attackers must have been chasing something, but not a single footprint marred the ground between them…
"Valtaya!" Fife suddenly breathed out. In their woodland homes, druids were impossible to track because they could pass without trace through any forest. Even in the scorched, ashen forests the young druid had retained this power, but her pursuers' tracks were clearly visible in the soft ashes that covered the ground. Quickly the ranger set out on the trail, hoping that the final member of his party had somehow escaped her hunters. As he continued to follow the path, however, he became more and more convinced that she could not have done so; the tracks veered west abruptly, and they still seemed to be herding something along with them. If Valtaya had not died at the hands of their attackers, she had at the very least been captured. He had failed his companions once already. If Valtaya was alive, he was not going to fail her.
Fife confirmed his latter suspicion only a few minutes later. The trail led to a pair of large, burned out oaks that had grown relatively close together. The tracks grew closer together, indicating that the hunter was no longer running, and then stopped altogether in front of the oaks. Other tracks, oddly shaped, two clawed prints the likes of which he had never seen before, joined the others. All of the tracks converged here, shuffling about in the cinders while they must have worked to bind their captive. Then the tracks started north, back into the heart of the burned zone. For a moment Fife studied the tracks heading north, then turned back to the oaks. Although it was dark and the strands almost translucent, the ranger noticed a huge spider web stretched between the two trees just before he could step into it. Fife backed off a step quickly and gazed in amazement at the enormous web, completely at a loss for how or why it was string between the trees. For all his time in the western reaches of Argent, the ranger had never even heard of a spider that could spin such a large web. As he tried to discern this newest twist's significance, the web trembled ever so slightly.
Fife jumped back a step and drew his swords, barely avoiding a large net of the same webbing as the initial trap. Before the errant net could even settle to the ground, an enormous, four legged spider launched itself from the top of the web, crashing into the ranger only a moment before he could dive out of the way. Fife managed to ward off the thing's clawed hands, but the monster managed somehow to find a way through his defenses and bite into his forearm with its mandibles. Summoning all of his strength to fight off a wave of dizziness from some kind of poison, Fife suppressed a cry of pain and shoved forward, throwing the spidery attacker back far enough to bring his swords back into line. The thing lurched forward again, intending to land another bite, but before it could get close enough Fife dropped low and whirled, slashing through the creature's bloated stomach with both blades. The thing hissed in agony and staggered away from the ranger, but Fife shot forward and ducked under a flailing arm, running his long sword through the creature almost to the hilt. With a last, pathetic squeal the thing slid off of the elf's blade and dropped unceremoniously to the ground.
"What in the Nine Hells are you?" Fife whispered, kneeling next to the monstrosity. A closer examination revealed the thing to be some kind of cross between a spider and a humanoid; its bloated, greenish yellow abdomen seemed to be a stark contrast to its gangly arms and legs, and spinnerets, much like a spider's, protruded from the bottom of its chest. Two large, bulbous black eyes were placed on the sides of its head, but between them six more eyes, or at least what appeared to be eyes, sat above the four mean looking mandibles surrounding its mouth. Uneven tufts of hair grew from its head and shoulders, and each of its arms and legs ended in two nasty looking claws.
Fife poked at the carcass a moment longer, but then turned back to the web still strung across the path. If Valtaya had indeed come this way, the evidence confronting him suggested that she had been captured by the spider-thing and turned over to the elves that apparently controlled it. Although he had no idea what elves would control such monstrosities and so viciously attack their own kin, Fife wasted no more time considering the question as he turned north to follow the tracks and find his last companion.
"It certainly took you long enough to get here."
"Many apologies, dear sister," Fychan said, bowing deeply before the chain mail clad drow in front of him. "We were interested in covering our tracks, just in case the faerie's companion decided to come after us."
"No excuses, brother," Talaith Evnissien declared coldly, glaring up at her younger sibling. Although drow women were usually slightly taller than their male counterparts and Talaith was not short for her kind, Fychan held at least two inches on his older sister. And like most drow, Talaith's flowing, silvery white hair, jet black skin, and almost delicate features made her far more beautiful and impressive than the pale skinned faeries of the surface. Coupled with her commanding, vicious personality and simmering crimson eyes, Talaith Evnissien seemed the very model of a matron mother, and many drow males would risk the perils of bedding the eldest daughter of a noble family to spend a night in the throes of passion with the elegant priestess. "Time is of the essence. That horrible ball of fire will rise in the sky again."
"I take it you mean the sun?" Fychan inquired, though he knew full well what his sister meant. Of all four drow that had come to the surface, Talaith had been the most initially revolted by the appearance of the brilliant golden globe that crossed the sky during the day, and had since professed undying hatred for the blinding light source. Fychan certainly had no love for the sun himself, but he had at least borne the curse of that fiery orb with more dignity than his sister. For her part, Talaith nodded angrily as she looked back to the heavens.
"Lolth steal that ball's light forever," the drow cursed, calling upon the matron deity of the drow as she had every morning since their arrival on the surface. Fychan was used to such curses by now; Talaith, like almost every female noble, was a devoted and brutal priestess of the Spider Queen, and Lolth had certainly given her blessings to the sadistic heir of House Evnissien. Lurking in the darkness just beyond her, three ettercaps, ugly, bloated humanoid spiders, spun their webs through the blackened and charred trees, setting more traps in case the last surviving faerie should find his way to their encampment. The priestess had also raised a trio of dwarven skeletons to serve her as bodyguards and warriors, and her array of clerical spells was certainly a match of anything a surface elf devotee of their putrid Mother could bring to bear. The priestess cast a final baleful glance at the brightening sky, then turned to the captured faerie kneeling next to Cadwared. "That is the one?" Talaith inquired.
"That is the one," Fychan observed, looking back to the helpless, ash covered surface elf. She had managed to control most of her fear in the face of her captors, but the drow wizard was certain that she would break easily under the machinations of Talaith and her handmaiden, Rhonwen. Although Rhonwen, like Cadwared, was a commoner bound in service to House Evnissien, she had also thrown herself wholeheartedly to the Spider Queen, and between the two of them Rhonwen and Talaith made an exquisitely demonic pair. Rhonwen held a pair of ettercaps and three more axe wielding dwarven skeletons under her sway, but she was not as powerful as the noble Talaith. "What would you like me to do with her?"
"She is our prize," Talaith said, slowly walking towards the surface elf. The faerie trembled visibly at the sight of the chain mail clad priestess, her sapphire eyes locked on the whip of writhing snakes belted to the noble's side. Fychan himself had felt that whip's sting many times, and could understand the faerie's renewed apprehension. "Matron Saffir will want her intact."
"She will slow us down, and could draw attention to us," Fychan pointed out. "Perhaps we should kill her now."
"Perhaps, dear brother, you should not question Matron Saffir's will, or the will of the Spider Queen," Talaith snarled, turning on the wizard. "Have you forgotten how recently it was that we defeated House Hen Wyneb? Have you forgotten how the higher houses watch us, knowing that we are ascending the ranks so quickly? Have you forgotten that we are in dire need of Lolth's favor if we are to survive the coming decade, and that a victory against the faeries will secure our place as the most favored House in all of Llyr?"
"I have not," Fychan replied submissively. Talaith continued to the surface elf, stopping in front of her and leering down at the trapped faerie.
"A noble, I wager," Talaith remarked, grabbing a handful of the faerie's silvery blond hair. The surface elf gasped in pain as Talaith nearly pulled her off the ground by her tresses. "And she bears all the markings of a druid. A perfect catch, brother. Matron Saffir will be pleased. This one's blood will seal our favor with Lolth."
"I am certain, but what do we do with her until then?" Fychan inquired. The wizard almost hoped that his sister would allow him to return to the lightless city of Llyr and escape the hellish expanse of the surface world, but the thought of killing another faerie, like he had the foolish surface wizard who had stood up in time to receive the brunt of his lightning bolt, kept him from volunteering to return to their subterranean home.
"How quickly could you teleport with her to the matron?" Talaith asked.
"I do not have the spell readied," Fychan answered. "It would take me a day to prepare it and teleport, then at least another day until I could return."
"Too much time," Talaith decided. "My skeletons will carry her with us."
"As you wish," Fychan said with a nod. Talaith hesitated for a moment, then turned to her brother.
"Hurry and create our shelter before that horrible ball of fire returns," the priestess ordered.