Chapter Seventeen – Revenge

Light flooded the cold stone room, lighting upon the figure that was curled on the ground in a small pool of congealing blood. Tired, pained blue eyes looked up at the sudden intrusion to the darkness that had swamped after the torch had gone out. It seemed like so long had passed since those lights had gone out and she had been thrown into utter darkness that only places deep under the mountains could bring.

Hope was beginning to abandon her mind, however slowly. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen the stars and the sun. Her human eyes longed for the light and her pupils dilated from the light she hadn't seen in a long time.

Kelnozz smirked as he knelt and looked into her eyes with his own crimson red ones glowing with a dark, evil light that made her blood run cold in her veins. She held her breath, blue eyes wide with fear.

"What are you planning to do to me?" Her voice was shaking slightly as she met those chilling eyes. "For what reason have you been keeping me like this?"

"Do you remember what happened to your husband after we captured him?"

His voice chilled her down to the bone. It suggested things that were dark and frightening, but saying them as if they were alluring. She swallowed thickly, meeting his eyes even though she was afraid of what she could see glinting within those crimson pools. Smiling sardonically, he pulled the many thronged whip from his belt, showing it to her.

It was spiked with little silver pikes, sharp and glinting in the faint light. Dried blood was soaked onto some of them and onto the black, braided leather thongs. Bile rose in her throat as she thought of the possibilities of what that whip had been used for.

"It took hours to make him scream." His voice was filled with a pleasure that made her choke. His laugh filled her heart with dread as he caressed the braided leather strings. "By the time we were finished with him, he had screamed himself hoarse. Breaking him had given me pleasure that I haven't felt in years." He turned to look into her sickly pale face. "He called out for his friends, and his father." He looked to the reincarnated Zaknafein standing calmly in the corner with the hood of his cloak pulled low.

"He called out for you the longest in the end, my dear Catti-brie."

He bent low and whispered softly in her ear. "Next, another of his enemies came to us, wanting his own revenge, and to add his own scar to that of your husband." He stood and began to walk around her in slow circles. "Now, for your information, I will tell you that he has always preferred the company of men to his bed. Rare, yes, but ultimately true.

"His reaction to our dear ranger was that, his skin was as soft as a woman's, and his face nearly as fair." Catti-brie looked down at the ground, unable to hide her growing horror. "When he say the look in his eyes, he knew instantly the best way to scar him."

His smile widened as he spoke again. "He took the innocence that he knew Ranger Do'Urden valued above near all else."

That was all she could take. She turned onto her stomach and emptied was little contents there were in her stomach. She dry heaved after her stomach was emptied, coughing and choking. Tears formed in her eyes as she thought about what the drow mercenary had told her.

That wasn't what he had told her.

Kelnozz smiled widely, looking towards his soldiers in the room, nodding and looking towards where Catti-brie was lying on the ground and coughing miserably. They walked towards her, surrounding her on all sides. Two stepped forward and lifted her by the arms, lifting her from the ground. She struggled the best she could, but the conditions of her captivity had left her too weak to pull out of their grasp.

"I think we will be trying to see how long you'll last, even though we won't use the same whip, no." He talked to her as she was chained with her back against the cold stone wall. "I hate to say this, especially to your face, but humans are much weaker, especially the females. I would hate to have you die on me while I am having fun with this. Though, if you were a drow female, I would have no problems using this whip "

She scowled up at him, but didn't say anything – she didn't trust her voice in such matters. She didn't want to make the punishment that she was taking any worse than she already knew it would be. She remembered what had happened during Drizzt's captivity – what they had done to him.

Drizzt's entire back was a raw, bloody mess, and the renegade ranger was shaking visibly. A small pool of blood had formed beneath his naked body, and he was curled in on himself, and it was a miracle to her that he wasn't screaming in pain.

She was surprised that the drow hadn't removed her shirt. Drizzt had told her how crude the drow could truly be when they wanted to be. His descriptions had been vivid – normally the drow stripped their victims naked before beginning their tortures.

According to the ranger, it would expose the parts of the body that were far more sensitive to the pain.

"Well, my dear Catti-brie, I guess you will finally be able to experience a wee bit of what your husband felt while he was with us." He bent to whisper into her ear.

"Enjoy."

The braided leather of the single-thronged whip brought a line of stinging, burning fire across her shoulder blades as Kelnozz brought the whip down hard. She choked by a cry – surprised by the burning pain brought on by that single stroke. Kelnozz only smiled as he brought the whip down again. So long had passed since he had had a playmate that could play with him longer than the others (demented, I know, but couldn't resist .).

He brought the strokes down, slowly and deliberately, bringing out the pain of the thongs as sharply as he could for the woman. Catti-brie held back her cries for as long as she could, but in her condition it didn't last very long. After a while, she cried out on pain as each individually laid stroke was laid down upon her tender skin.

Black edged her vision and she was shaking softly from pain and exertion. Tears stained her cheeks and her head was spinning. She couldn't remember how long she had cried out for her lover, but she was beginning to think that it was all hopeless.

The last thought that flittered through her mind as the darkness over whelmed her was that maybe he wasn't even trying to come to her aid . . .

Catti-brie smiled slightly as she watched her husband and her eldest son sparring in the large chamber of their home. Zaknafein had been training for a year now with the long, slightly curved sword and the pair of long knives that he had taken up a year ago when he had turned sixteen. He was already taller than his father and had girls from Lonelywood flirting shamelessly with him whenever he went into town. A small frown formed on her face as she remembered how distant he had been towards the girls lately. Not to mention staying in his room longer and becoming more and more distant towards his father, and hardly speaking to him.

Mikhail sat in a corner with his sketchbook, charcoal sticks, and the little knife he used to sharpen them. Every few minutes he would lift his twilight hued eyes from the parchment and look at the two fighting in the middle of the room. Catti-brie smiled as she thought of the talent that the 23-year-old elf held within his hands whenever he used the black substance to capture images if the people around him.

Aimee was sitting next to him, watching her father and brother fighting. Every now and then she would look over to see what Mikhail was drawing, and when she did look, her lavender eyes would widen in amazement. She was already training with a bow and had been taught how to use a knife at a young age by her father, in order to defend herself.

Sylvan and Nalfein were in the fields of Lonelywood, playing with the other children, and probably chatting animatedly with the girls specifically. They were already living up to the word 'teenager.' They continued their archery training on days that Zak and Aimee weren't being taught their lessons. They also had their lessons with their father in the forests and plains.

With a soft sigh, Catti-brie turned back to watch the fight that was taking place between the two fighters. Zak had been learning fairly quickly, and could face off against his father for at least a full hour. Sometimes he practiced with the pair of long knives, with the sword alone, or even sometimes with the sword in his left hand and a long knife in the other.

At the moment, he had let his guard falter for a moment, having turned to smile at his mother.

Drizzt used the opening to his advantage by smacking the broad side of his scimitar against the side of Zak's head, surprising him and knocking him to the ground. The beaten teen looked up at his father through narrowed eyes. Catti-brie saw Aimee roll her eyes as he opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut off by his father.

"Do not let distractions get to you." He said quietly, sheathing his weapons calmly and stretching out his hand to his eldest son. "I wish that I don't have to tell you that again."

Zak's glare only deepened. He stood, brushing his father's hand aside, not meeting those questioning lavender eyes. "You always have to be pointing out things that I do wrong! Why can't you tell me what I'm doing right?"

The ranger closed his eyes and sighed. "I don't tell you what you are doing right, because you can do that with surpassing excellence." He softened his voice. "I tell you what you need to improve upon because what you do wrong could be the end of your life. I don't want anything to happen to you, and that is why I want you to improve on the distractions that you provide yourself."

Catti-brie walked away from the wall towards her son, but he continued his way and stalked through the door of the room. Drizzt sighed again and sat in a chair, running slender fingers through his long hair. Sometimes trying to be patient with him could be frustrating, especially since he never seemed to listen.

Metal grated against metal, though it was hardly heard amongst the cheers of the Luchiélt soldiers. Serenity smiled slightly, shaking her head as she continued feeding her son softened vegetables. The soldiers were watching another one of Drizzt's learning sessions – the ones that involved the long knives that Gabriel was teaching him to use. He had already taken to the stilettos easily, as they were not used for fighting.

He had taken to the long, slightly curving knives as if they were merely smaller counterparts of the scimitars that he used so fluently. Watching him learning how to use these weapons frightened the young Lady of the Luchién. It wasn't at all like the drow she had come to know. He had become silent, and hardly even spoke. He kept his complete focus on learning how to use those weapons in such a short period of time.

He was slowly becoming the killer that he so despised.

The hunter was taking a small part of his soul and Drizzt had now idea that it was even happening. She knew that that was happening to him, and yet, when she had mentioned it to him, he had blatantly denied it, looking at her with growing flames in his lavender eyes that had frightened her. That afternoon, as they had been traveling, she had told her husband what had transpired, he had looked at her with his violet eyes, something within them glinting with something unfamiliar to her.

"I know that he feels responsible for what happened to Catti-brie, but I think that something else it happening to him, mehen." She looked at him, into his eyes.

He then sighed. He too had noticed the changes that had occurred in the drow ranger, and was worried about what was happening. "I'll talk to him tonight after our training session, mehen. He'll be worn out and I'll be able to talk to him privately."

She had smiled, glad that he too had noticed what was happening to Drizzt. "Thank you, love. I appreciate this." She then had kissed him on the cheek before turning back to the road.

Now, Gabriel was fighting hand-to-hand against the ranger, pushing the cheering of the Luchiélt soldiers out of his mind. Metal clanged against metal, the sharp ringing echoing dully amongst the watchers. His arms wove and weave, keeping the other pair of moving long knives at bay. It was amazing how quickly Drizzt had taken to the new weapons, especially since had only been using them for no more than two weeks. They had been traveling for a week – the soonest that Alustriel would allow the drow to begin traveling towards his destination.

Through his training sessions, he had bent out his frustrations about not being able to go immediately to go Catti-brie's aid and save her from the hands of the drow. His movements were as fluid and easy as if her had been training with those knives his entire life rather than the scimitars that he had had always used.

They had been fighting for about an hour straight, which was fairly long, considering that he was still wounded from the encounter with the drow. He fought with a fire in his lavender eyes that betrayed his calm expression as he continued to weave, dodge, parry, slice and stab against the Luchiélt High Lord. Gabriel had yet to break a sweat over the fight.

Without warning, Drizzt dropped to the ground, throwing one foot out and keeping the other beneath him for balance. The sudden drop surprised both Gabriel and the soldiers. The soldiers had never seen him move this quickly before and watched with wide eyes as Drizzt spun on his heel, bringing his foot across the Luchién Lord's heels, knocking him to the ground, safely out of reach of his long knives.

The air was expelled from his lungs as he landed hard on his back. The ranger straddles his chest, knives crossed at his throat. The soldiers were silent. He stared down at Gabriel through hard eyes, emotionless and eerily blank. The High Lord's breath stopped in his throat at the look in the drow's eyes.

It terrified him to meet those eyes.

He swallowed thickly. "Ranger Do'Urden, you won." He took a deep breath. "You can get off of me now." The drow didn't relent. His eyes were wide and his breath came hard, his voice was stern as he spoke. "Ranger Do'Urden."

He jerked as if startled and scrambled to get off of Gabriel. His eyes darted back and forth, looking around at the startled faces of the Luchiélt soldiers. Breathing hard, he ran his shaking had over his face before lifting himself off the ground and running into the woods, squirming his way through the wall of soldiers.

He ran until the stitch in his side was unbearable. He didn't know where he was in the woods – he never traveled to this specific area that often. Breathing hard, he looked around the moonlit clearing, seeing it all through the tears that had welled in his eyes.

He collapsed to his knees, looking down at his hands with wide eyes. He had dropped the long knives back where he had been sparring with Gabriel. He hadn't realized until that moment, though. He had come into this clearing with nothing to defend himself with except the stilettos that he had hidden up his sleeves. His shoulders shook as he buried his face in his hands, unable to stop the tears that poured down his face.

What have I become?

He had almost killed the lord of the Luchiélt people. He had, in every training session, thought of Gabriel as one of the drow, which had helped him gain the skills that he had wanted. He hadn't realized how deeply he had begun to believe in that.

I don't want him taking me over.

It had nearly cost the Luchién his life, and it had been at his own hands.

The thin knife sliced down, tearing another thin line on the skin. He grimaced slightly in pain, but accepted the pain nearly as stoically as nearly everything else – taking this pain as a distraction from everything swirling in his mind. Blood pooled in the wound quickly, pouring down his arms to drip in to the water of the hot springs that he was standing in.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Drizzt Do'Urden cut another tear in the soft skin on the inside of his arm.

The pain helped, the pain helped keep away the pain of what was happening to him. Tears ran down his face as he looked down at the scars covering the insides of his arms with some fading and several fresh and bleeding.

It had all started last year, after his captivity with the drow. Even Catti-brie hadn't noticed. The burn of the knife wounds had kept his mind off of the events for a time, and by the spring he had stopped.

After Catti-brie had been kidnapped, it had been the only way to escape again.

Forcing down a cry of pain, he plunged his arms into the hot waters, the burning pain searing through his arm and into his body. He shuddered as he leaned against the edge of the pool. The burning slowly decreased, but the memory of the pain did not. (A/N Believe me, that really does hurt like hell.)

The pain was the only way to escape.

A/N
Hey people! I'm finally updating! I'm sorry that I haven't updated sooner, but school started last week and I haven't had much time on the computer. And hey! I got an idea for another story. Forgotten Realms in today's world. Cat, Drizzt, and Wulfgar all in highschool!! Tell me what ya think when you review this!!! And all reviews are welcome!! --
--RangerDo'Urden
-btw, there is supposed to be a break between the cutting part and the comment about Gabriel's life.