The door soundlessly opened, and Yazae stepped in. She locked the door behind her. A single lock was all that kept intruders out but, it was a strong lock, near impossible to pick or bash. The door itself was thick, too thick for any sound to escape to passing ears.
The Drow Matron held a delicate-looking tray in her hand. It was thin, made of silver, which gave it a brilliant luster. Surface-elf script had been chiseled into its edges by a now-deceased hand. Yazae had acquired it on a particularly bloody raid on an elven settlement. It was one of the pieces in her collection that she reserved for prisoners; it would be an insult to serve a guest with it.
Across the room, Shil'niss sat in a chair, made from oak wood imported from the surface. The former matron sat still, her eyes glazed with madness. Her hair, once the envy of drow everywhere, was dull, lifeless. It hung around her face in the sweaty clumps of disrepair. Overall, she had a greasy appearance, evidence that she hadn't bathed in weeks.
Her red eyes fluttered over toward the door, barely registering that someone had just entered. In her mind's eye, she was once again before the Council; Hla'ani leering at her as she stepped into the room to prepare for the ritual.
Yazae set the tray next to her mother and stepped back quickly. She was wary of her unpredictable mother. She studied the former matron for a moment. Every time she saw her she wanted to cry, not the tears that a daughter would cry for a lost mother, she considered those to beweak and foolish, but selfish tears, for Shil'niss represented what she could become.
From all appearances they were alike: weak, skinny and tired. Yet, Yazae's mind was still sharp; Shil'niss' mind had been torn asunder. Once, Shil'niss had prestige, beauty, strength, and most of all her wits. Yazae craved to be as strong and beautiful physically as she was mentally; most had thought that she wouldn't make it to be an adult for she had always been sickly, even at birth. She had, though. She had proven them all wrong. Why then, did she feel so empty?
Yazae, against what the council had expected, had kept her mother alive. Most thought Shil'niss to be dead and those that didn't could only speculate. She had kept her mother in this room, locked away, only so she could find out the location of her Treasure Room.
Shil'niss had often stupidly bragged of her hoard of magical weapons, armor and other riches that she had collected from the surface, which, she claimed, she kept in her Treasure Room. It had no known guards; secrecy of its location seemed to be its only defense. Servants of House De'affin: guards, slaves, healers, cooks, maids either didn't know or weren't telling.
Even after offering freedom to the slaves, whom didn't know that 'freedom' from their bondage was death and, a miraculous amount of gold to everyone else for information on its location, she still couldn't find it. Many slaves had come claiming that others knew where it was. When the priestesses had killed them and interrogated their corpses with a powerful spell they had found it to beall lies. She could kill every servant and interrogate their corpses, whether they claimed to have information or not, but that would be suspicious.
Yazae shook off the sneaking suspicion that the Treasure Room didn't exist. It had to; where else would Yazae keep all those items that she had gottenfrom her escapades to the surface?
She came to visit the former Matron everyday, alone, and bring with her a tray heavy with food. It seemed that, her mother was the only one who knew. Hopefully, she wouldn't carry that knowledge with her to the grave. Usually, a drow priestess could interrogate a corpse's spirit about any knowledge that they had in life but when the spirit was insane…no, it was too dangerous.
"Eat." She demanded softly. If she spoke too loudly, she risked frightening her mother.
"Hla'ani…" The crazed-woman hissed the name, as if it were a curse to make her disappear.
"Eat." Yazae said again. She was not happy about having to repeat herself.
"Hla'ani…," The matron said, with a triumphant smile, her eyes still vacant. "You thought that you could break my mind. You failed! I won! My mind isn't broken! It isn't!"
"Eat." She said impatiently, losing the last bit of her patience.
"Now, Hla'ani, it is time for YOU to go through the ritual…," She knocked the tray from its place on the table beside her. It fell to the floor with a clatter, its contents spilling across the floor. "…my way! I'll personally be the one to cut your brain from your head…let us see YOUR mind function then." The woman's lips curved into a smile, still her eyes showed nothing but insanity.
Yazae jumped back fearfully as the drow woman's arms flailed in the air, as if she were drowning, chocking on the very air that gave her life.
"Shil'niss, its Yazae!" She shrieked as she stepped backwards but Shil'niss was beyond reason, unhearing her daughter's words.
Yazae was alone to defend herself. No one would hear if she cried out for help, and if they could hear they wouldn't care. She had no defense, save for her measly repertoire of spells. She cursed her frail body under her breath, as she had done many times before.
Yazae began to step backwards, towards the wall. Her mind went blank and spewed with terror. At that moment, Shil'niss was no longer useful, no longer was she a former Matron or her mother. At that moment, she was a threat to her survival, her enemy.
She made a run for the door muttering the words to a hex as she went. Her feet pounded on the tile of the floor leaving a resonant sound. She cursed the size of the room. Suddenly, she was jerked backwards, her feet almost flew from under her.
Shil'niss had yanked her back by the collar of her blouse and now, her hands reached for her neck. Even after weeks of inactivity, she was still stronger than Yazae. She tightened her grip on Yazae's throat slowly, causing the painto increaseten-fold. She gasped for breath; the spell that she had been muttering was interrupted.
Now, Yazae was even more defenseless. She couldn't cast a spell. She did however, have one last resort. She worked up her strength and gave one solid kick to the mad drow's torso. In a matter of moments, Shil'niss' grip on her throat had loosened, allowing Yazae free.
Yazae rubbed her sore throat. The insane Matron had only been stopped for a few moments; this barely gave her enough time to mutter a spell, one that would temporarily paralyze the drow woman, rendering her immobile.
With the final words of the incantation, Shil'niss froze, her eyes burning still with hatred.
She hated using that spell. The way the victims froze, as if time had continued without them, was uncanny. What made it even worse was that she knew that thoughts went through their head still, even as the were forced to keep motionless, she couldn't use body expressions to gain insight into what they might've been thinking.
Yazae tore her eyes away from Shil'niss, and to a tapestry, depicting the drow race's descent into the Underdark for the first time, which hung from the stone wall. Behind it, she had hidden a dagger; just in case things got bad. Little good it did her, when Shil'niss had tried to kill her. At that time, she couldn't reach the dagger.
Now, she could.
Her eyes never did leave the still body of her mother, frozen in crouching position, as she sidled slowly towards the tapestry.
She stopped when she felt soft fabric brush against her shoulder. She tore her gaze away from her mother and to her side. It was the tapestry. She ripped it from the wall with a great heave. Behind it was the dagger, stuck between a crack in the bricks of the stone wall, just big enough for the slender weapon.
She turned around, the dagger in hand. She knew that the old Matron could see her, and guess her intentions.
Something about this annoyed Yazae. An unidentifiable feeling pricked at her heart, like knives. It wasn't anger or hatred… perhaps what she had felt was the absence of feeling as she steeled her heart so that, once again, she could take a life. Something about it egged her on. It egged her to make the former Matron pay in ways that only the drow could imagine.
She took a few steps toward the trapped drow. She knew that her spell wouldn't last any longer. Whatever she was to do, she would have to do it quick.
"I hate you...But know that…" She stated flatly as she circled around Shil'niss, like one of those 'birds' she had heard of in her studies of the surface that would circle around corpses.
The drow didn't…couldn't… answer.
"You're always pushing me, testing me…just like every other damned creature that I have come into contact of." Her voice was filled with the bitterness of a thousand beatings.
Her anger became greater when her mother didn't answer. It didn't matter that she couldn't, just that she didn't.
It was quick. The knife plunged into Shil'niss' back. There was no blood-curdling scream. No last words, very little blood. If there was a lot of anything it was silence.
The crazed drow woman fell limply over. Her eyes forever open. Death would keep her more still far longer than any Paralyze spell dared to.
She pulled the knife out of her mother's back. The knife's blade had been stained red. Tiny little crimson droplets fell to the ground as if the dagger was crying.
Death had a certain appeal. The sense of power that it gave her, to give the ultimate end, the one thing that inone way or the other was unavoidable and ruled every second ofone's life whether it was a Farmer hoarding money so that his children would not go without once he was gone or a wizard becoming a lich so that he could escape old age, only to die at the point of some inept adventurer's blade.
The feeling was exhilarating…addictive.
She tossed the knife aside, and with it, all the feelings that she had felt from her mother's death. She neededa wayto dispose of the corpse. She wasn't strong enough to carry the corpse to dispose. Later, She would get one of the hobgoblin slaves to help her carry the dead woman off. A hobgoblin's strength and lack of intelligence practically guaranteed them to be slaves. They asked no questions, they just did as told. She frowned. Some people could learn from them.
She undid the locks on the door with great difficulty. Afterwards, she opened it slightly and slipped through, trying not to make even the slightest sound. She closed the door behind her and walked down the stone passages, her footsteps echoing. She had an appointment with one of those bastards of Shamath.