Dark Flower Ch. 6 (previously Broken)

[Mikayla]

[Continuted from 'Another Snowfall.']

Two months. Two months of sitting in this cell. Two months of the blandest food imaginable. Two months of water and bitter ale. Two months of the darthiir and their pet. Two months of dwarven threats. Two months of Jain’n.

Two months since she had been captured by the darthiir.

Sheyreiza kneeled, naked, in her cell in Battlehammer Hall. Before her was a dresser with one drawer pulled out, turned over and set upright. On the bottom of that drawer was the spider symbol of Lolth, drawn in Sheyreiza’s own blood. It was all she had to write with. This overturned drawer with its sanguinary spider was her shrine now, and this cell was her world. In the last two months she had only set foot outside of this cell twice, both for brief forays out into the freezing snow. Not once had she seen the comforting caverns of the underdark, or even the mines of the dwarves: Only this cell, and twice, the inhospitable surface.

She brushed her sweaty hair back with her hand and regarded her little shrine. Pathetic, but it was the best she could do. She had been praying here for several hours. It was what she did. What else was there to do? At least in the dungeons of the Valsharess there had been other heretics to lie with. Here, there was just her cell; more comfortable than the Valsharess’ pits, but infinitely more lonely as well. Sheyreiza reached out and placed the drawer back in the dresser.

She scooted across the floor to the side of the dresser, braced her arms, and used her legs to push the dresser a few feet towards the door. On the floor beneath where the dresser had been was a thick shard of glass from a wine bottle she had broken. On the wall behind where the dresser has sat were Sheyreiza’s etchings. Shey had found that if she was patient, she could use the glass shards to etch into the wall. For a month now she had been etching. So far, she had achieved little other than to write the first stanza of the Litany of Hate. Now she was starting on something else entirely. The first thing she had to do was carve her name. Which name though? The one she was born with? Or the one she had adopted?

Both.

It was the only way to tell her story. After all, she was both women in a sense.

But who cared?

She would likely die in this fortress unless she abandoned her goddess for the Dark Maiden. And who would care? Even if she escaped, so what? Where would she go? Ched Nasad? Not a chance. House Auvryndar would kill her if found, and House Claddeth would exploit her. Menzoberranzan? Just as bad. House Faen Tlabbar would learn of her appropriated identity soon enough if they had not already, and then her life would likely be forfeit. Had Sheyreiza actually achieved some measure of power, perhaps she might be spared and adopted, but, she was still young and relative inexperienced. A priestess yes, but not a high priestess. Where else? Eryndlyn? Maerimydra? To what end? To be slain as a Houseless outsider? To be enslaved? Or perhaps to become someone’s battle-captive? Sheyreiza was beautiful enough, perhaps that would be her fate. There were many who might wish a beautiful, houseless priestess as a servant.

It seemed the darthiir here did.

Convert or die: a simple proposition. Sheyreiza admired its perfection. It was a dilemma worthy of the Ilythiir. Of course, if this were really an Ilythiiri dungeon, the proposition ‘convert or die’ would really mean ‘convert and die.’ How can you trust someone who would give up their goddess?

Indeed. How could you? Sheyreiza closed her eyes and held her head in her hands. She had given up Lolth once before in an attempt to save her life.

No. That was not quite right. Shey did not want to save her life then, she wanted to avoid dying in Lolth’s service. There was a difference. Such a difference. All the difference.

As Sheyreiza sat on the floor she thought back and realized that she knew what had changed her life. She knew the exact moment when her life took a turn it should not have.

Until she was ten years old and no longer a weanling, Sheyreiza was raised as all the noble daughters of House Auvryndar had been for generations. Her world consisted of the Auvryndar Chapel, the female apartments, the courtyard and little else. And that was enough. She was raised by one of her older sisters, who alternated between pampering Sheyreiza and beating her. As one of the Matron’s daughters, Sheyreiza was entitled to live like a princess, but was also expected to become a priestess. With great rewards comes great responsibility and what greater responsibility could one have than to be one of the priestesses of the Ilythiir, guiding the people in Lolth’s will so that they might survive their enemies, grow stronger and thrive?

When Sheyreiza turned ten, she was taken to see her mother, Matron Shyntlara. Sheyreiza knew very little about her mother other that her mother was a power second only to Lolth herself. Shyntlara commanded the power of life and death in House Auvryndar, but that was not her worst power. Sheyreiza knew her mother also commanded the favor of Lolth, and as the highest priestess in the House, Matron Shyntlara could expel anyone in her charge from the faith. And then have them slain. And Sheyreiza had been told only too many times what happened to the souls of the faithless. They were lost to oblivion, or to the abyssal pits without a guide or caretaker, to become matron-less manes and larvae whose only use was as food or fodder for the demons of the outer planes. Even at a young age, Sheyreiza knew a fate worse than death when she heard one.

Sheyreiza prepared for cycle after cycle for the meeting with her mother. She studied the litanies, practiced her bows, and prepared her silks. She was only ten, but she strived for a level of perfection fit for a novice priestess preparing to leave for the academy. When the time came, Sheyreiza was led by her sister to see Shyntlara. And none of the preparation prepared Shey for what she would find.

Shyntlara was not seated upon a throne in magnificent finery, wrapped in the robes of a high priestess and armed with a whip of fangs, surveying her underlings as Sheyreiza had pictured. Shyntlara was, in fact, standing all but naked. A platinum belly chain with the symbol of Lolth, a simple necklace with the symbol of House Auvryndar, and a few other pieces of simple jewelry were her only adornment. A body lay at her feet, and a few drops of blood ran over her lips. The matron wiped up the dribbling blood with one slender finger and its wickedly long fingernail. She put the finger in her mouth and licked it clean. Seeing Sheyreiza, she smiled and revealed her long vampiric fangs. Matron Shyntlara had become a vampire.

As shocking as that revelation was, Sheyreiza paid no attention to her mother. Someone else had caught the young girl’s attention entirely. Something else actually.

It was a narrow, upright, tan colored cone of flesh as tall as an orc slave. It has several tentacles it waved about languidly, and ooze seemed to drip from all over the creature. In the middle of the cone, there was a single, great eye and that eye now stared at Sheyreiza. Sheyreiza knew what the creature was on sight for she had heard of such things. It was a Yochlol, a handmaiden of Lolth. The Yochlol could take several forms, from a beautiful drow female to a spider, but this was their most demonic, most otherworldly form. The sight of it took Sheyreiza’s breath away and had she not been reared by another priestess of Lolth where missteps led to beatings and failure led to death, Sheyreiza would have run screaming from the abomination in her mother’s chamber.

Sheyreiza remembered her naked mother speaking though she did not remember the exact words. Something to the effect that the Yochlol was a most honored servant of Lolth, a sign of her favor, and one of the ultimate rewards for faithful service, both in this life and the next. Sheyreiza understood that to mean the Yochlol might be her fate in the after life. That realization shook Sheyreiza to her core. The creature was horrid. absolutely horrid. The thought of being that ugly, that monstrous, made Sheyreiza want to kill herself.

Sheyreiza, like most drow, and indeed, most elves, prized beauty. For Shey, the love of beauty bordered on obsession. She was beautiful herself, and reveled in it. One of the clear signs that the Ilythiiri were the greatest of all races was their shear beauty. Graceful, lithe, stunning to behold, the Ilythiiri were unmatched, in Shey’s eyes, by any other mortal race.

This creature, this Yochlol, was the antithesis of that. The beast was a huge, squat, legless, oozing, tentacled, one-eyed horror that made Sheyrezia want to vomit. The idea that she might, in the afterlife, have to trade her beautiful drow form for this reeking column of flesh created a pit of fear and loathing in her stomach like nothing ever had before. To spend eternity as such a thing would defy any mortal torture – truly it would be abyssal.

And just as Sheyreiza was confronted with what would become her life’s greatest dilemma, she was also confronted with the answer, for next to this most disgusting creature stood the most beautiful drow Sheyreiza had ever seen – her mother, Shyntlara. And Shyntlara was not going to age. Shyntlara was not going die. She was dead already, or at least undead. There was the escape. To become a vampire would mean that one might serve Lolth faithfully and yet never have to become what this creature, this Yochlol was.

In the years that followed, Sheyreiza watched her mother carefully, learning everything she could about vampirism. What she discovered disturbed her greatly. Matron Shyntlara was unable to pass her ‘gift’ along to any. Those she drained never rose from the dead as vampires themselves. Well, almost none did; there were only three ‘successes’ – two of her sons and one daughter. All had failed the test of Lolth, all were transformed into driders. Rather than let them live, Shyntlara had drained them, but they had risen. Now, they were vampiric driders under Shyntlara’s command. Useful servants, but why was her gift only passed to the faithless and not the faithful?

Sheyreiza did not know, but she was determined to avoid the fate of those faithful of Shyntlara’s brood who were bitten – death. So, Sheyreiza turned from Lolth. She had sought a new goddess, such that when her time came to be bitten by her mother, she would not be among Lolth’s faithful, she would be a follower of Kiaransalee. Who better to worship if one was going to seek out vampirism than the goddess of undeath?

Sheyreiza could not stand the thought of being a drider any more than she could tolerate the thought of being a Yochlol, however, so she kept her heresy a secret. Her plan was simple. Maintain her façade as a priestess of Lolth, worship Kiaransalee, and when Shyntlara drained her, die, and then come back to life. Shyntlara would not suspect Sheyreiza to rise – no other faithful follower had – so when Sheyreiza did rise, she would have the opportunity to kill Shyntlara before the Matron could command her.

And so what if she failed? She would be at her mother’s command, but she already was. The only difference would be that once a vampire, Sheyreiza would be immortal. Immortal, and forever beautiful.

But then all went awry. Sheyreiza’s heresy had been discovered and she had been forced to flee Ched Nasad.

And now, Sheyreiza Auvryndar, once a princess of a House on the Ruling Council of Ched Nasad, sat in a dwarven dungeon praying to make-shift shrine and carving litanies in stone with a shard of glass. Her only company was the armored dwarf guard outside the door who constantly reminded her how much he would like to take her head. Her only solace was a darthiir who came be once a ten-day or so to feed her delicacies from the surface and talk to her about warmth. Her only source of amusement was the occasional verbal jab thrown at the darthiir’s pet priestess of Eilistraee.

Where was the beauty now? Where was the grandeur? Where was the hope? Ched Nasad seemed lost to her, as did Menzoberranzan. Sheyreiza could abandon Lolth again, turn to the Dark Maiden, but at what price? And so what? Corellon would allow no Ilythiiri in Arvandor. No black feet had walked those green fields in ten millennia. Where did Eilistraee’s followers go? Nowhere. They wandered the afterlife without a home, or so Sheyreiza had been told. The darthiir said that the Ilythiiri followers of the Dark Maiden walked the fields of Arvandor along side his ancestors, but Sheyreiza knew he was lying. He had to be.

And what of Eilistraee? What had she done for the Ilythiiri? Lolth had destroyed the enemies of the Ilythiiri. Where was Miyeritar now? Gone. Lolth had preserved the Ilythiiri when all of elven-kind turned on the Ssri-Tel-Quessir. With Lolth’s help, the Ilythiiri had built new cities, new nations, and new worlds in the Underdark.

What had Eilistraee built? A shrine in the woods? If Eilistraee had been the Ilythiiri’s only goddess, only protection, the Ilythiiri would have been wiped out generations ago.

That, then, was the choice. To die in Lolth’s service and spend eternity in the pits, perhaps as a Yochlol. A more hideous fate Sheyreiza could not imagine. Or, to choose the dark maiden and become a pet of the darthiir and move the Ilythiiri one-step closer to extinction.

Somewhere deep inside Sheyreiza, something broke.

She stopped scratching against the wall and set the shard of glass down. For a while she just stared at the wall. Eventually, she looked back down at the shard of glass. She picked it up again and examined it. She stood and walked over to the bathtub. There was a little water left inside. There always was. The drain was not perfect. In time, the dwarves would bring her hot water in buckets and she could bathe. She stared at the bathtub for a long time. Finally, she bent down and set the glass shard in the water at the bottom. Lying there, it was virtually invisible. The dwarves would not see it, and would likely not care if they did.

Sheyreiza felt an odd calm come over her. She was destroyed and she knew it. She had let the darthiir get inside her head, and though she had resisted, he had pried a door open. Behind that door lay all the emotions she had learned to repress during her years at Qu’ellar Auvryndar. The emotion that seemed to have crawled through the crack in the door was despair.

She walked away from the tub and crawled, naked, up on the bed. She pulled a blanket around her and closed her eyes as if to sleep. She would sleep instead of reverie. Indeed, perhaps soon she would sleep forever.

[Zakharra]

[Burt]

Awesome story. I almost kind of wish you would convert just so I could taunt you forever for playing a follower of Eilistraee. Neither quessir nor ilythiiri. An abomination. That would be glorius - until it dawned on me that good drow are the worst thing since getting kicked in the balls repeatedly.

Falduna ulu Lolth!

[Souvarine]

Not usual of me to comment other’s stories, but this one is good enough for me to raise my “chapeau” to the author.

[Kalrenath]

Very, very good. And inspirational. It feels like the more I read of your character and her.... infamy, the better I'd be able to roleplay a drow. You set an example. Keep it up!

[viigas]

*applause*
and I sure did liked the part where she actually understood what we the proud dwarf most like do to ya, ohh and I hope da guard sharpen his singer axe every night next to ya door

and there is another chapter ready allready *quickly clicks to it*

-must read more-