Warning: Chapter contains more violent sexual content. Actually, chapter contains mostly violent sexual content. Game canon is included. No svirfneblin villages were harmed during the writing process.
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A fry-up of mushrooms with some sort of vinegar and weak beer from the deep gnomes instead of the decent surface food they'd passed away. The drow could put it away like a dwarf and never show it on her weight; ate food easily as she copulated. She set aside her cleaned second plate and drained her drink to the end, still glaring betweentimes.
"Morimatra is drow wine, and it is far stronger than this illithid urine," she said. "They give it to us when we are still children; we quickly learn the strength of it. In my land in Beregost I sought to grow grapes, but the vines were a failure. The soil was too rough for the plant; my composts too late. It straggled and never reached the frame I borrowed from my neighbours as far as I knew. I had more success with parsley and lentils, though I hate lentils. In two short years I might have had dark red grapes thick and ready on the vine...or not."
Not easy to see her dirt-fingered and bent under the sun grubbing in earth. She'd left none too long after the Fist pursuing her had been killed; left with her share of the loot from the bandit camp—perhaps slightly above that, for what ye'd call her force of personality to say it mealy-mouthed.
"Are you listening to me, slave? I am not your mage, I do not talk to thin air or to rothe-headed fools." She laid down a two-tined stone fork.
"Listening. You're not the only one with pointy ears."
"Typical surfacer. I know what you are; and I know myself. In Beregost I could not find what I searched for."
For they drove ye out for being drow...or worse? He wasn't stupid; he said nothing.
"I bought my land below the laws," Viconia said. "I lived on the small homestead on the outskirts of town, I wore my hood at all times and I kept myself on small needs. My neighbour was named Roran Midfallow, a stout, sunburned human farmer. I paid the male to bring me supplies, and asked him to tell me the things I needed. He never asked me why I wore a hood. Over time I lost the sensibilities of the drow. I thought that I trusted him, and I thought that it was friendship of a sort. Shar does not prohibit alliances built on common goals.
"It was a hot damp day when at last I let down my cloak, the sun dappling along the south quarter of his farmland; I could tell that he had wondered. He saw that I was drow and said nothing, only gave a warm smile. I should have known then that he had known for some time. For the past months we had spoken. He lived with two sons on his farm, growing oats and mushrooms and raising cattle. On that day he said that his older son, Jiscanan, was making a feast to burst the first button, and that I was invited. We walked to his farmhouse, where his other son, a surly oaf named Funnard, was sickling quackgrass in the front yard. Quackgrass is a vicious weed, with stronger roots than that other surfacer weed called crabgrass, though there are superficial similarities in the appearance of it. Some strength is needed to remove that noxious growth.
"Roran and I walked to his farmhouse, where smoke burned and some surfacer meal was cooking, and on the doorstep I learned his true intentions. Somebody hit me in the back of my skull, and the ground rushed up to meet me. My trust had made me grow weak. They chortled as I lost consciousness. They said how easy it had been; they congratulated each other on a fine...on a fine catch. They laughed at my pitiful state.
"I knew no more until I woke to searing pain. They had abused and tortured me while unconscious, then tried to bury my sins. I could see nothing except for the lid of a coffin. They were weak fools. They had buried me alive. A mistake not to kill me outright. Pain is the handmaiden of the drow; their tortures were as amateurish as anything you could think of, slave. They had even less idea of it than your Harpers, though they had forced their bodies on me. Males do not dare commit that against noble females of the drow."
Dorn elgg ir.
"What did you do to them?" Montaron said.
"First I split the coffin lid and let the earth in. I clawed to the surface, swallowing dirt, my hands bleeding and two of my nails torn to the quick." She spread her neat-kept fingers on the wood of the table. "Pain did not slow me. My brief weakness did not stop me from vengeance. The surfacer fools were drunk, their fire burning, their ale flowing, toasting over their victory of the hated drow. I watched and I waited. I found simple tools. A stake from their patch of beans. An old mining mallet. A thin rope wound over those same plants. The older son, Jiscanan, left to use the outhouse. I jammed the stake in the door, trapping him inside. Then I set the building aflame. He screamed like a trapped dragazar, a pet-creature we keep chained. Roran came running, yelling to his other son. He stood helpless and drunkenly stupid before the flames. I wrapped a garrotte around his neck. I whispered to him of his mistake, and mine: he underestimated a drow. I trusted foolishly. I tightened the rope until he breathed no more.
"At last the other son, Funnard, came running with a bucket from the well. He found his father's corpse and his brother a smoldering ember, stinking like roast cattle, the fire spread to the family home and to the fields. He dropped to his knees in shock. This afforded me a height advantage as I caved his head with the mallet. I fled across the dark fields before any other surfacer could see the blaze and come running to lay the blame for it on me. Then I returned to the wilderness...and found the bodies and heavy armour of Iron Throne mercenaries murdered and left behind. I took bits and pieces that I could carry; I traded my way to Athkatla. I had only left my hood down for a moment when the foul surfacers imprisoned me there.
"Wonder not that I dislike your kind, slave. But I fear numbers of my own as you ought to fear me."
"Folk are bastards everywhere," Montaron said carefully. "Deserved all they got. Not that the likes of us come off better, in most marks' eyes."
"The likes of you have done much the same." The red-brown eyes narrowed like an old woman's while the scowl deepened. "Perhaps like me, a little, but I am not weak enough to leave my opponents uncontrolled and alive."
"Watch your back. Watch theirs even closer," he said. "But I know ye know that. In the past ye were top-dog, weren't ye? All the forelock-tugging and humble slaves ye could want—for all ye nobles have your hired bloody assassins and poison-plots to keep on your toes—"
"You could hardly imagine it, crude one."
"—And then you get dumped in the shit-heap with the rest of us commoners. And enough folk who've seen your kin in action. But pity's a thing ye'd say only beggars want."
"Iblith."
Beer was squidmouth piss; not strong enough to compel anyone. "There're a few things I don't like doing. A few things ye have to do, to stay alive and punish the folk that think o' you as prey. Tends to be everyone sooner or later."
"You're quoting classic drow proverbs at me, unlearned one." Viconia paced the floors of the gnomish inn. "I allowed those foolish surfacers to take nothing from me. A human merchant on the road to Amn, who traded favourably with me; he was young and virile. The vampires were tedious and impotent unless they had very recently feasted; in boredom I turned to you once more, slave. I still amuse myself with lust. Do you fear me?"
"Would if I were fool enough to trust ye with the loot. But then I'd like enough be fool enough not to."
"I wonder what you would be like broken, slave," she said. "You act as if you feel little. Deaths of others and the needs of the flesh become your goals. Perhaps you would yield quickly and try to feign obedience until your master left an open space in the back—or perhaps you would not be able to resist defiance, claim otherwise though you might. It could be interesting."
"Do what ye like, drow, and I'll do the same. Bed the innkeeper's daughter yourself if ye please, or the mad mage if ye can silence him from screaming."
"No," Viconia DeVir said, "do as I say; I will bed you, little man. We served the asylum well."
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It fell cold; they'd not rested; she glared at him below her nest of rough blankets. Always liked more than a rightful share. Her skin was close to cold as a bloodsucker's but grew warm over time. It was heated now; his head was between her breasts. Soon enough he'd be ready again.
"Don't paw. And don't lie on preferring the overstuffed human shape, male." She pushed her fingers into bruises already made on his shoulder.
She wasn't near as delicate as she looked, or as she whined on the road. Grey as a cross between stone and ice. You learned quick how folk moved for a fight, especially in a world of tallfolk; and how fool they were to leave those gaps where it was easy to weave under and strike them where it counted. She was the one for this sort of thing. His hands moved lower, across the drow's taut skin over her stomach. The words, 'too good for the likes of', would flash in him, and yet there was no sense in wasting time on that thought. Something about strength and cruelty and spitting in the face of those who thought they'd gotten rid of the halfling or the blackheart drow.
She lifted herself on her elbows, turning like a snake about to snare a meal. Half fey and half cruel, flashing between moods and poses quick as water-changing.
"When you stepped through that portal, slave," she muttered, groggy as if drunk after all, "for which—I wonder—" Her voice faded. Didn't much matter. He felt lower and lower still, past sweat-soaked and wet skin. She let herself back down and brushed over him. The touching was more than enough for more action between them and she reached behind his back, fingernails digging in like daggers. Blood stained the sheets and it seemed all smelt of copper.
"For it matters not," Viconia whispered, her muscles gone slack-twisted, splayed and softened with a leg wrapped around him. "The mage makes a useful tool—"
"Ye weren't thinking about him moments ago." Hard to read, near-impossible to read what went on inside her, but he'd felt her shakes from her centre and her snapping in like a vise. Doubtful a horde of umber hulks falling from the roof could've been a distraction at that point.
"You were passable. Slave." She didn't move; the blood in her pulsed like a bird's wing-beats. Never tamed, o' course. He touched that spot above her thigh-bone. "It's only that... Your mage is so terribly far from attractive." She let him finger her a way he wouldn't have done to a paid woman, barely listening to her. "Broken. He comes already broken. From the point of view of a master, that could be quite interesting."
Then she bent her head to his neck and near acted like a bloodsucker. Like she wanted him to respond she continued talking when she was done.
"Madness is his refuge. He would retreat to his madness in pain, using oblivion and delusion to forget all. You might break, male; he is shattered. Everything breaks down here in the Underdark."
"Ye'd know," he muttered, to head her off snapping something to that effect. Couldn't give a proper fight if ye already thought the whoresons would win. His hands ran along her ribcage. He wasn't tired enough to give in.
"The markings would be my key, for your necromancer. He hides behind them. I believe him when he claims to have chosen them; he's not a talented liar, acting as a seer to the truth as he imagines it. He wears a mask of chaos that he thinks protects him from others. Symbols can be so important to the weak-minded," Viconia said.
"I think I would start," she continued, "as for any slave with some hedge-arcane craft, by breaking his fingers. Gag him; bind him spread-eagled and immobile. Perhaps break the feet, too. I would place numbing spells to hide the pain until I desired to lift them. Be lighter, slave; you're capable of fingering mere locks.
"Then wait for him to wake up, touching him naked and helpless and able to do nothing to control it. That alone would make your mage scream, if he were not silenced. Tell him something of my plans, for those with imagination always know how to use it to torment themselves." Viconia leaned out, her chest rising and falling, staring into the distance. Her left hand patted Montaron's cheek.
"Lift the knife; bring it down; and one by one cut around those markings so conveniently left as a map," she said. "Flay the skin and slowly heal it, as if anything he chose to do to himself ended at my whim. Place the tattooed remains in a jar. He is not handsome, our young necromancer. I doubt he should be any more so with clean skin. But he would be upset by it. If I could not terrify him away from remembering any spell by then I would be very disappointed in myself. This would make me able to remove the gag—a silence prayer to make sure; take the parts I cut away; and feed him his own skin piece by piece. He'd eat himself. No retrieval of his own space." She shifted position. Montaron paid attention to her body beyond her words.
"And then I could move on to see what other pains would amuse me, removing all numbing," Viconia said. Her nails scraped across his chest, heading downward. "Playing with bones already broken almost always causes a reaction; and there are so many small bones in the hands that a priestess can choose to shatter, one at a time, always making sure she has missed none. Or there are some very interesting torments that can be inflicted with only a slim quill pen..." Her hand crept to his shaft, and that was enough of the talking.
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