It had been a long time coming. Honestly, Cessair had known it was time to run for cover as soon as Galen said he was going to talk to Val. They were almost a full day from Rockhollow with wounds that were still healing. No one had wanted to stay in town lest the succubus's superiors decide to come find out what had happened when the demon failed to check in. Besides, as Lirayne had put it, the sooner they were to Menzoberranzan, the better. They were close now: the tunnels were wider and well maintained with signs of frequent travel.
She cringed slightly as soon as she heard raised voices from the edge of their small camp in a moderate-sized cavern with a stream coursing through it along the path. "We should probably do something about that," she said with a forced levity. "Before someone loses an eye." Granted, Cessair didn't really think that Val would seriously harm her brother. The spirit might have been willing, but with only an hour or two of sleep after that battle and the rush to this new camp, the flesh was undoubtedly weak.
Lirayne's lips pressed into a thin line. She tolerated Galen surprisingly well despite everything, though he did have the unfortunate habit of sticking his foot straight in his mouth and possessed a bizarre tunnel vision when it came to what he perceived as evil. She supposed she could understand, since the average paladin or inquisitor of any faith was trained to be a zealot. She wasn't exactly the most accepting person herself, though she might have tried harder if other faiths were less...inferior. "Your brother needs to get his head on straight, and no one can force him to do that. Maybe if Val finally stops tiptoeing around him he'll take a hint. And if not, well, the repeated blows to the head will probably be arranged for him."
"Lass is half demon," Storunn grunted. "I ain't happy about it meself."
The priestess of Lloth rolled her eyes. "Yes, and Cessair is half elf. How much control does she have over that, precisely?" she said sharply. "If you want to lay blame at anyone's feet, throw it at my mother's. Though I wouldn't, personally. She has a notoriously low tolerance for people who waste her time."
They all paused when the voices grew louder. "When, exactly, should I have brought my abyssal heritage? When I found out? You were there at the time!" Val's voice was clear as a bell, raised but still a good deal softer than Galen's bellow.
"You could've told us you were cozy with demons, or that you actually bound them to your flesh to the point it started eating away at your soul! Did you even think about what would happen? Desperation isn't an excuse for depravity!" Galen shouted back.
Lirayne pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She knew that her sister was probably too tired to care what came out of her mouth, which while probably illuminating, would undoubtedly limit her ability to respond rationally. However, she didn't move to intervene yet. She still hadn't forgiven Galen for their own fight just yet, so she supposed it wouldn't be such a bad thing if Val slapped him a few times. Preferably hard.
"Desperation? What would you know about desperation, paladin? I was a child! Everyone around me either hated me or stood by indifferently. Most of them actively set me up to fail. They wanted me to die. Malcanthet may be a demon, but she was at least there. She offered me a chance to advance myself and I took it to survive."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Because being seduced by power is so much more noble than stumbling into it," Galen spat, his voice weighted with sarcasm.
"What would you have done if you had nothing? If your whole world turned its back on you? The only reason you can stand here being holier than thou is because you have never ever had to make a choice like mine. You want to think that I'm evil, fine. But you're a long way from perfect yourself. Eisheth chose you because she could sense that you were weak, that you would succumb to temptation even without compulsion." Val's tone carried a hint of mockery in it. Her voice had also lowered in register and sounded slightly rough around the edges. Her accent was growing thicker, forcing her to pronounce every word perfectly to be understood.
"Alright, now we step in," Lirayne said, standing up. Valyne had their mother's temper: it was when she started to get cool and collected that it was time to worry about being at a minimum safe distance. And those words definitely sounded calculated. "Blondie, grab your brother. I'll handle Valyne."
Cessair looked surprised by the nickname, though she wagered that Lirayne had only started using it because someone told her about the stereotype for blonds. It was a little more lighthearted than she ever expected to hear from anyone who cut peoples' hearts out on an altar in the name of an insane goddess. But then again, the rogue figured her life had gotten very strange recently. "You certain?"
"I know what to say to her," the cleric explained with a little shrug. "And you know enough about the situation to explain things to your brother in a less...confrontational manner." The pair of them closed the distance on their arguing companions. The human looked like he was about to pop a vein in rage at the insinuation that he was easy to manipulate.
"Galen, enough. Unless you want to solidify your reputation as a complete ass?" Cessair said pointedly, resting her hands on her hips in the universal expression of female displeasure.
The paladin's head snapped around so he could glare at her, but the look softened almost instantly and he didn't say anything stupid. He still felt guilty about what he had said to Lirayne in one moment of anger. No need to fan the flames by angering his sister as well "Cess..."
"Val saved you," she said, grabbing his arm and steering him away from the two drow. "Without her, we never could have reached you to free you from that thrall. There are fates worse than death, and that for the rest of your life and maybe beyond definitely counts as one. And even though you two mix like oil and water, she risked herself for your sake. Val's choices are her own. I know you don't agree with them, but honor that she made them with the best of intentions. Just like you honored my choice to join the thieves' guild."
"Consorting with demons?" Galen said, his voice losing its harshness when he looked at her. Even though Cessair was older, he had grown much larger much faster and fallen into a role as his sister's protector. At least, from some things. He still found himself often reminded that she was more worldly than he is.
"Malcanthet offered her something no one else ever did, and it wasn't power," Cessair said. She had pieced together little bits and pieces of the story from what both Lirayne and Val could be coaxed into telling her. Most of it came from offhand remarks and the interactions between sisters, allowing her little glimpses into the past. "Galen, do you think we're proud of you? Ma, Da, and I, I mean."
"Yes," he said, confused about the direction she was going.
"Did we spend time with you? Treat you like you were something special? Teach you little things and praise you when you managed to do them?"
"Yes." He couldn't help a faint smile at those pleasant memories.
"Malcanthet was the only one who ever did those things with Valyne when she was young. Drow don't really do affection in any real way. Functional families are about as common in the Underdark as unicorns are in the middle of Waterdeep. So without that demon she was 'consorting' with, she would have been completely alone," Cessair explained a bit less than gently. Although the demon undoubtedly had ulterior motives and left corruption in her wake, the rogue had to admit that the creature had probably done more than anyone else. Which was admittedly disturbing.
Galen was quiet now, digesting this information with a thoughtful expression. "I..."
"Think of it this way. You meet a dog that's been beaten and mistreated its entire life, but one day a murderer shows up and feeds it. He pets the dog and cleans it up and plays with it. Would you call it a bad dog for following the murderer and defending him?" The half elf made a mental note to never, ever bring up this conversation again within earshot of Valyne. She doubted the drowess would find it a flattering comparison.
"No, but a dog doesn't understand what evil is," the human said, looking increasingly uncomfortable. He was starting to understand.
"Neither does a child, Galen, even if you try and teach them," Cessair said, sitting him down on a low ledge that was near the fire. She offered a silent prayer to any god that happened to be listening in the hopes that it would help Lirayne with her probably furious sister. The last thing they needed was a personal vendetta splitting the party. "Has Valyne, as long as we've known her, attacked an innocent person? Has she betrayed any of us?"
"No," Galen said, letting out all of his breath in one loud exhale. "No, she hasn't."
"You're letting doctrine blind you. The real world is more complicated than people think. Some do good acts for the wrong reasons. Others do evil with good intentions. Val may be corrupted and damaged, but she forgave her sister and offered her help with no strings attached. She's protected us even when it was probably smarter for her to drop us like a hot rock," the rogue said. She had no idea when she became the party's voice of reason or moral compass, but she'd always been good at leaning into the weird. Besides, she would rather have Galen trying to show Valyne that sunshine and rainbows were the answer than nearly coming to blows with her over every little thing.
He sighed. "I see your point," the paladin admitted, lowering his head. His brow creased and he huffed slightly. "With the order, things were simple. Black and white. The Underdark is a...complicated place."
"So is the surface, Galen. Not to belabor the point, but hello? Unrepentant criminal standing right here? You know I'm not evil, otherwise your paladin sense would be tingling by now."
The human chuckled before growing more serious. "I need to make things right with Val," Galen said, moving to stand up. He was stopped by his sister's hand on his arm.
"Drow don't really get apologies. They lie pretty much constantly to each other, after all. Just try and treat her a little less like the enemy. For now, get some sleep. I'll go see how it's going."
Lirayne and Valyne were on the other side of camp, concealed by an outcropping of stone. Cessair padded over without a sound, not intentionally trying to stealth. It was just how she walked. The younger drowess had nearly collapsed with exhaustion almost as soon as Galen was distracted and a distance away. "You didn't have to point out the fact that he's easy prey, you know," Lirayne said dryly, though she didn't really mean her reproach. She knew that if she had been in Valyne's position, her own comments would have been far less generous.
Cessair chose that moment to drop right down on the other side of Lirayne, earning a completely undignified sound and startle response from the cleric. The priestess of Lloth recovered almost as quickly as she'd flinched, leveling the half elf with a lethal glare as she wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her dagger. "So help me, blondie, I will put a bell on you."
"Oops." The rogue tried to look apologetic, but she couldn't help the grin that crept onto her lips. "Who knew drow squeak?"
"..."
"Lirayne, murder is not an acceptable response to Cessair's sense of humor," Valyne murmured, taking advantage of her sister's back facing her to smirk. Whether they knew it or not, the interaction between her traveling companions was helping her calm down even more. It felt strangely normal despite a decade spent largely on her own.
"How do you feel about a light beating?" Lirayne's expression was still homicidal, but she wasn't really contemplating too much harm. Besides, thoughts of vengeance in the morning would distract her from how relentlessly awful she was feeling.
"Too tired to care," Val murmured sleepily. "Wake me for watch."
"Like hell we are," Cessair said, rolling her eyes. She affected an appropriately intimidated look that seemed to satisfy Lirayne for the moment. "You earned some rest. By the way, your sister called me 'blondie'. Did you teach her that word?"
"No, Storunn. I just told her to find something more creative than 'elf bitch'." Val would have elaborated, but she couldn't keep her eyes open any more. She drifted off, too exhausted and comfortable for even the nightmarish images of that dark, submerged city to disturb her.
Cessair looked over at Lirayne, toying with the earring in her left ear. As a half elf, her ears weren't quite as pointed as a full elf's, but it was still a marked difference from a human's. "Elf bitch, huh? Never heard that one before."
"It sounds better in drow," the priestess said, unruffled. Something about her expression was just a touch smug, but underneath the comments lay an air of wary respect and something almost approaching camaraderie. "Darthiir elg'caress."
"I...you know, actually, you're right. But you know what sounded even better? Not knowing what that particular pet name you have for me meant. What's Galen?"
"Vith'ez mal'ai."
"He is, isn't he?" Cessair said with a grin. She learned that particular phrase from one or two of Val's frustrated moments. Hell, she'd accused him of being just that in more than one language on many occasions. "Just give it another few weeks and he'll really grow on you. He's like a rash."
"So are you, blondie."
"Val, what's the hold up?" Lirayne called over her shoulder before turning to face her sister. The arcanist was normally in the lead, but now she had stopped next to a crumbling statue that overlooked this back path to Menzoberranzan. They were in tunnels very familiar to both drow, barely a half day's travel from the City of Spiders itself.
"Just...give me a minute." Valyne ran her hand over the base of the statue. The smoothly cut rock had long ago become rough and uneven as dripping water carved new paths and left deposits of mineral. The statue itself had fared somewhat better than its inscription, set back under an arch carved into the tunnel wall. A drow woman in armor, arms crossed over her chest with a dagger in one hand and a symbol of Lloth in the other.
"There are demons chasing us and you want to stop to stare at the stonework?" the priestess snapped, even as she searched the darkness for any sign of approaching demons. They had traveled for nearly three days without an attack and it was making everyone paranoid. After all, how long could good luck really last? "Fine."
"It looks old," Cessair said quietly, looking up at the statue with fascination. Perhaps it was her inner looter speaking, but history had always attracted her even if she didn't have the learning to appreciate the significance. "Some of the carvings in tact by her head look very different from the drow script I've seen elsewhere. Almost elvish."
"Well, it is a likeness of Menzoberra the Kinless, founder of the city. It was probably created either during her lifetime or at the time of her death," Lirayne said, trying to relax her shoulders. She'd unconsciously tensed the moment Cessair mentioned the similarity to elvish. Everyone knew that drow had once been elves, but no one liked being reminded of that. Even their language was a derivative. "It's been a few thousand years since then. Val, honestly, why are you even stopping? Goddess knows it's not for the marvel of encountering an old dead woman's face."
Val fingered a broken corner of the statue's pedestal. "This..." She took a deep breath. "This is where they left me." Without supplies, it was the worst place to be in the tunnels around the city. No food, no water beyond tiny droplets leaking through cracks in the stone above, just an empty stretch of tunnel leading out into the hellish maze that was the Wilds. A wrong step and you ended up in the territory of a drider. Patrols rarely swept through this area unless they were actively hunting for an enemy that scrying had detected.
"Yes, well, Zesstra never was as clever as she liked to think. Clearly she failed to allow for your annoying knack for surviving unpleasant situations. I would have slit your throat out of sight of the city and fed the body to scavengers so that resurrection would be that much harder," Lirayne said in a matter-of-fact tone. It earned a laugh from Valyne, while Galen and Storunn stared at her like she had sprouted a second head. "What? I said I'd kill her first. I'm not a monster and we are sisters."
"Honesty? Not always the best policy, squeaker," Cessair nearly groaned.
Lirayne twitched slightly at the nickname. After the first time Valyne had been required to restrain her, the priestess agreed not to attempt violence so long as no one else ever found out where that particular term of endearment came from. "When we reach the city, your ass is mine."
"You're not really my type, Lirayne, though I appreciate the sentiment," the half elf said with a wink. "Plus, Galen would get jealous."
"Wha-hey!" The paladin looked mortified and more than a little irritated with his sister. He went to punch her shoulder and missed, almost hitting Lirayne. Her eyes narrowed slightly, prompting him to take a step back.
Storunn sighed and turned to Valyne. "Not this dwarf's turn ta separate 'em."
"If you three are done behaving like children?" the arcanist said in a particularly frosty tone. She actually didn't mind, but they needed to focus on other things. "We will be in Menzoberranzan in just a few hours and we need to decide how to handle it."
It was a problem significant enough to draw the attention of all three participants in the fight. "We can't rely on a disguise spell, as impressive as your grasp of polymorph is, Val," Lirayne said, brushing invisible dust off her shoulder as if to dismiss the objects of her annoyance. "Mother, Zesstra, and Mourndar would all notice in an instant. But undoubtedly, any of these three walking around as they are would present serious problems."
"If we had your mask..." Galen said, looking to the arcanist. If she had one once, surely she could just create something similar.
"It took me a handful of favors from incredibly talented people to craft that, not to mention thousands of gold worth of rare reagents. We don't have the resources," Val muttered darkly, still furious about how it had just been casually destroyed by that succubus. Not for the first time since that battle, she hoped that whatever Malcanthet had in store was appropriately painful. "We could disguise them as slaves."
"That has its own problems," Lirayne pointed out, worrying at her lower lip slightly as she thought. "It might work for Storunn. Our paladin would be fairly easy to explain away as a demon hunter and very reluctant ally. He already plays the part perfectly. If he keeps the breastplate off and doesn't mention Torm, he might even get to continue breathing. Blondie, you'd be on an altar to Lloth before you could blink. You look too elvish."
"I suppose it's too much to hope that I can just stick to the shadows?" Cessair said wistfully.
"Drow are paranoid," Valyne said. "They would notice you. And then very unpleasant things would happen. However, I might have a solution. We make minor magical changes to Cessair's appearance and layer an effect over it. The other two are covered well enough by your plan if Galen bites his tongue."
The priestess considered this. "What were you thinking?"
"Add horns and a tail, make her detect like a native outsider instead of an elf. We've been investigating demonic activity. A tiefling companion wouldn't come as much of a surprise," the arcanist said. She looked over at Cessair and concentrated, weaving patterns of glyphs in the air with her fingers. The half elf wavered like a mirage on the horizon for a few seconds before her appearance shifted. Their rogue was now sporting small, pointed dark horns and a black, barbed tail. "Cast detection on her now."
Lirayne had to bite back a laugh at the shock on Galen's face. "She...shit, she does look like a tiefling," he admitted. "She's not tainted like a half demon, but she doesn't feel right any more."
"Love you too, brother," Cessair said with a roll of her eyes. She could feel her tail twitch. It was...unnerving. Now she would have to worry about someone grabbing it from behind in a fight. She flicked it, curling the last six inches around the hilt of the dagger in her boot and drawing the blade clumsily. But with practice, she could definitely see potential. "Ooh! Never mind. I love having a tail. Galen, look what I can do!"
"Behave, blondie," the priestess snapped, scowling as she cast detection. "Val, the polymorph is hidden under that native outsider feeling. Just get her to act less elvish and we might survive this little misadventure. How long can you sustain it?"
"I can enchant a ring for the purpose," Valyne said. She caught Cessair's hand and deftly slipped off the rogue's ring. "This will do. Why don't we take a break here and I'll set to work on it while everyone gets comfortable with their new roles?"
"Do I have to wear a collar again?" Storunn asked, doing his best to keep his tone disgruntled rather than belligerent.
"Well, that depends on whether or not you want a brand," Lirayne said sweetly. She paused for a moment. "Val, come to think of it, can we collar blondie while we're at it? I think I have a bell somewhere."
"Just...no."
Vith'ez mal'ai - fucking idiot