All The Old Knives

Moderators: Forum Moderators, Active DMs

Post Reply
User avatar
Drowble Oh Seven
Posts: 427
Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:36 pm

All The Old Knives

Post by Drowble Oh Seven » Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:11 am

You. Did. This.

You. Did something. Without. Permission.


The words burned in her veins like poison.

Ilivarra snarled at no-one and nothing. The cavern walls supplied their mocking echos, bouncing off stone and stone and stone again until the distant, mad muttering of the derro swallowed them. Even then, she heard the failure in the noise and loathed herself for it. The smoking firepit and upturned cookpot of its former occupants was her only company. The firepit, the cookpot, and betrayal.

The dark elf balled a hand into a fist; tore at the ragged derro-sized bedroll beneath her, rotted rothehide and stains. It came apart under her hands and she flung the tattered remnants against the wall, imagining it was the darthiiri's flesh under her nails. The bedroll burst in a flurry of rotted cloth; and she scrounged around for something else to destroy. Her hands closed around a pin and she tore it from her leathers with a hiss.

A black orb covered with a silver web. The crest of House Na'dar'zul, the key to that dying spectre of a house; the product of a tenday's work. A tenday's smiling sycophantry, paying court on Elise and her puffed-up halfwit of a brother. He had desired her. Had wanted her. A little longer, and she might have made him hers. She had needed only string the savas game a few more turns. Had needed only to deliver her Demonweb-accursed letter to Maerwen Serenthal and claim her reward.

Had been on her way to do precisely that, when the elf's messenger had come.

Qaelan's words rang in her ears.

You arrogant. Green eyed. Mongrel.

The pin rang like a bell when it struck the stone, but it did not break. Ilivarra cursed and retrieved it, the knives Qaelan had shaped for her rattling in their scabbards. Those, at least, had not betrayed her as their maker had. Not for the first time, she imagined splitting the elf's neck with them, and the lust burned in her like a wildfire.

But she could not. Not yet.

To face the mad elf with steel would be her death, and she was not so foolish as to deny that. Her allies were scattered and uncertain, and would doubtless melt away before the darthiiri like blood in water. Kron's loyalty was questionable, and the male lacked the skill to slay Qaelan even if he had the former. Qil'nafae; perhaps, would stand with her. Her hatred of Qaelan must be as great as Ilivarra's own. But still too weak, and working with her meant working with her twisted, snivelling sister; who would doubtless love nothing more than bury a knife in Ilivarra's back.

Na'dar'zul. Perhaps. But to make common cause with Elise, in truth rather than by order, would earn her Serenthal's enmity for however long her life might last. If she took that road, she was not arrogant enough to presume that it would be long. She had had no difficulty twisting the House to her needs. She did not imagine the drow who had ordered her to would suffer the slightest hindrance doing the same.

So it was her alone, for the time. A small, predatory part of her found that she liked the notion. She could be patient. If she must. She could bow. If she must. The truth, after all, would drift to the surface. In time. She tore parchment and charcoal from a pouch.

Maerwen Serenthal would have her letter.

Post Reply