The Dark Crystal (Anyone)

OoC: By the way, I was talking to Drammie, and he said the spell was just leaves and petals floating and fluttering about. No branchs or full plants growing anywhere. You could say Leonna was tripping on rocks because she couldn’t see the ground well through all of it. Up to you.

BiC:
The passage they walked into was suddenly clear. Khaz smiled charmingly at Leonna, keeping his true thoughts and feelings off his face as usual. His heart sank with a thud at her words of praise. It wasn’t him who remembered all this. It was Takai who was the smart, clever, and immensely skilled one. He just lacked social skills.

“Thank you,” he replied, allowing himself to look down bashfully.

Lying was his only skill now.

“Great that all this stuff has gone now.”

“How strange … I sense an odd ward … I can’t locate it though, and do you hear those sounds? Someone is fighting in here,” Takai muttered in his head.

Well, there is someone else in here besides us … That doesn’t sound good. If he’s fighting so obviously, he’ll be dead shortly, right?

“So you do have some brains in this head of yours after all …”

Rontu turned his head to look at Khaz over his shoulder. One glare reminded Khaz what he was supposed to be doing—giving Rontu directions. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

Ren glared suspiciously at Khaz’s back. “How did you remember all this? I have never met anyone as airheaded or clumsy as you are.”

Khaz scowled but didn’t turn to show this to Ren.

“Well, maybe you assumed wrongly. Maybe my true potential comes out when in dire situations.” Well, it was sort of true in a weird way.

Ren snorted with disbelief but kept silent after that. He couldn’t afford to get into a full argument right now. Like Rontu said, he had to stay focused or their cover could be blown when they least expected it.

Rontu barely lifted his eyes up and saw the spiders. They hadn’t attacked him. It seemed they couldn’t tell he was a heretic. He was very relieved by this. He didn’t want to be caught with Leonna burning them down from every ceiling. A drow loyal to Lolth would never disrespect her in such a way. Speaking of …

“Don’t panic,” he turned his head to look over his shoulder at Leonna. “Do not burn them. They will not attack you when you are with me. Understand you must not under any circumstance panic. Even if one of us gets killed. Do—not—panic. That goes for the rest of you as well.”

“Okay everyone,” said Khaz. “Get into character; we’re coming up on some more guards.”

After a few more twists and turns and straight intersections they came upon the next door and check point. They paused just before the door. Rontu’s gold eyes now reflected the black panther’s. Cold and ruthless they bore at these guards by the door. One stepped forward to Khaz who held the bag.

“It is mandatory that we check your—” began the drow guard, reaching for the bag.

“Do you know who I am?” snarled the drow. His attitude somewhat different from how he usually behaved around the others. He always seemed rather cold, of course, but now he portrayed a vicious anger not usually displayed by him. Along with an air of superiority and disdain.

The guard froze at this question, his eyes taking in Rontu’s noble clothing. Yes, he was now very afraid that he had insulted the wrong person. “… Sir?”

“I’m Kelagh of Hlaund, are you insinuating that my slaves carry anything inappropriate while they travel with me?”

Without any signal, Ren stepped out from behind all of them. He used his thumb to push the hilt of his weapon up, showing part of the gleaming blade to the guard. Ren with his white hair did rather look like some half drow, born of rape and kept and raised as a guard and slave. Ren narrowed his eyes directly into the guard’s gaze. The drow’s eyes darted to this action and then quickly back at Rontu. If he dared to insult him by demanding to check Rontu’s bag, he knew he would be very much dead. And no one would have seen anything.

“No, my lord,” said the drow, but not too quickly to suggest a lie. “I did not realize it was you. You may pass …”

Rontu narrowed his eyes venomously at the drow, as would Kelagh have done hearing that someone did not recognize him. He did this only long enough to make the guard sweat a little, as if he were deciding whether or not to kill him for the mistake. And then he moved ahead, no longer caring to look at the guard. As Ren passed him he slowly placed his hilt back down, giving the guard a cool sneer.

To Leonna’s displeasure, they were once again in a room with leaves and petals floating about everywhere. Once the door closed behind them all, Khaz moved ahead of Rontu and then turned to stare seriously but still with that wide gaze that gave him his innocent demeanor.

“Okay, now these next few rooms are full of traps. Follow me and do exactly as I do exactly where I do it … or you’ll die and could possibly take some of us with you,” said Khaz, but with more warmth than Rontu had before. His eyes stared tensely at them all. Obviously not acting as if one of them dying was no big deal. “There’s no guards for a while. So it’s okay. And Kuldr, could you please take down your wards. They might trigger something in here.”

Ren narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Khaz yet again, but he didn’t say anything. Keeping his thoughts to himself, wondering how on earth Khaz knew the layout of the place so intimately or that Kuldr had placed wards around them. He also appeared unworried about all the obscuring leaves and petals that were there again.

The Hylian turned and began to lead them forward through the maze of danger and safety. He moved very slowly for all of them, everyone in a single-file line. Each person passed the mimic of Khaz’s movements down the line. When he ducked, they ducked. He guided them through a strange swerving and twisting path. He walked around a large stone and then grasped an archway that led into the next part of the maze. He flung himself forward onto the other side.

He was looking down at his feet when he landed. His feet stopped just short of landing on a hand of black faded skin. His eyes followed the hand farther, and through the leaves and petals to the rest of the body of the drow that laid directly at his feet. The man’s insides hung from a hook in the wall. The smell forced itself into Khaz’s nostrils. His eyes slowly went to the drow’s face, which was smiling dreamily at him.

Expression full of bliss.

Khaz felt as if his insides had vaporized. Felt as if his feet plummeted through the floor and that he was falling. He wanted to look away so bad but he felt as if his eyes were glued to the man’s face, which was missing part of his cheek and an eye. He felt Takai force his eyes away from the face but at the rest of the body, studying each part in detail.

No

No

No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no, was all he could think. He didn’t even realize he was saying that out loud, nor did he notice his companions dropping next to him.

“No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no …”

But Takai forced him to kneel down, lowering himself to look more closely at it all. He had to see it all. If he were to understand the person who did this he must look, which meant Khaz had to look with him. At the moment they shared the same eyes. He could not take Khaz over completely or the magic users with them would feel the change in aura that was much too drastic to ignore.

It must have been done by the same intruder. He must have made it to the crystal chamber from here, for they were headed the same way. But why …? This work it didn’t feel as if it were done for pleasure …

While Takai mulled this over, Khaz’s senses were screaming. His whole body tingled with shock was if he had been electrocuted. His mind went back to places, memories he didn’t want to go to. He went back to Hyrule Castle, down into their dungeons where the drow who had taken control of the land had fashioned a torture chamber. The room absolutely reeked of rot; for not far away, in the corner was a square hole in the ground where they dropped the corpses of those they were finished with.

He remembered how he vomited when they first pulled him into the room with Blaze, the newly crowned Gerudo king, next to him. He couldn’t move anything below his neck. Just his head and eyes. They had injected something into him that made the rest of his body disturbingly numb.

They chained his hands above him to the wall, even though he was drugged and couldn’t move them. They hung Blaze up by his hands to the ceiling, were he dangled for hours. They had not drugged him though. It was in there together, facing death that the two finally faced each other honestly for the first time in four years.

He remembered looking up at Blaze’s hanging form as he told him how Sori had tortured and threatened him with the death of his family if didn’t keep the truth about Leita. He had known what his uncle had been doing to her for three months before Khaz walked into his office and found them. And that he had not avoided Khaz after Sori’s death because he believed he was insane, but because he couldn’t look him in the face anymore after what he had not done. He couldn’t bear to tell him the truth for fear that he would hate him for being such a coward and allowing Leita to suffer all that time. He said it was easier for Khaz to hate him for something that was not true.

But their reunion was quickly ruined. Hyde Kushin and Dito Caminar came into the room. And then all he dared to remember was Blaze’s scream. All the while trying to hold onto the promise he had made Blaze before they came. That no matter what they did to him, no matter how much he screamed and wailed. No matter what, he was not to tell them anything about the Rebellion’s plans. To allow Blaze to make up for not being brave all those years ago.

He remembered Blaze naked and strapped to a table. His head forced to the side as they slowly tipped a beaker of unknown liquid onto his already heavily beaten face. His face had been so mashed up, swollen, and bleeding it was no longer recognizable. When the fluid touched his face, his skin sizzled and bubbles of blood started to form, melting him away.

He remembered the abnormally short dark elf, Kushin, and his bone-white mask that covered one side of his face. The eye on that side was completely ink black, no whites at all and no colored irises. He remembered when Blaze’s hand escaped his strap. It flung up in his agony and knocked the mask off the drow’s face. The whole right side of the drow’s body looked as if someone had poured the same liquid all down it. His flesh was twisted and oddly smooth. No hair grew on that side of his skull.

He remembered Blaze screaming.

Screaming.

Screaming.

Screaming.

And before he knew it he was screaming too.

“Ahhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhh!” The noise erupted from his throat and mouth. Somewhat cracked in between, full of as much pain as there was horror. His hands clutched his head, fingers digging into his scalp. Tears streaked down his face.

It echoed all around them and then everything seemed so quiet. He stared at the drow’s body before him, and then finally jerked himself from Takai’s control. He whipped to the side, still on his knees. His palms hit against the floor as he leaned forward and puked. His stomach clenching, his body tightening abruptly as it forced the jerky, bread, and water from earlier out his mouth.

OoC: Phew … okay. Cue character reactions!

His captors half-dragged, half-threw the false Omentus into the crystal chamber. One of them called out, but not loudly, “We’ve captured the intruder.”

“Bring him before the crystal,” a cold and stern feminine voice replied.

Omentus, through his scrying mirror, could see everything. In fact, his vision was far better than normal, except for the strain it put on his mind, of seeing in so many ways at once. Everything was still hidden by the thousands of colorful petals fluttering through the air, so it was all still limned in green fire by his ring. The mirror displayed things as if they were lit, so he could see things in remarkable detail. Furthermore, his recent infusion of drow blood to his body enabled him to see the heat of whatever was visible.

Still looking into the mirror, he began to trace a cancellation shape onto the table. It was a triangle bedecked with runes, arcs and lines that went in different directions, with a similar pentagon laid across it. To Omentus, it represented a particular spell.

In the image, Omentus was being forced to his knees before a jet-skinned woman who was mostly obscured by flying petals and leaves. “This is what your trespass has brought you to, foolish creature. This is what you get for crossing the favored of Lloth,” she told him. She took an adamantite rapier out of its sheath, from one of the males that flanked her. “I only wish I had a way to kill you a thousand times.”

The man in front of her fought against the drow holding him down, when a third drow struck him on the back of the head with the pommel of a halberd. He stopped struggling, but was still conscious.

The priestess standing in front of him smirked. “Any last words?” she asked him, baiting the man. As he opened his mouth to speak, she slashed to tip of the blade across his neck.

Omentus struck a line through the shape on the table. Far away, the entire mass of petals and leaves buckled and began to twist.

The drow did not hesitate. She plunged the rapier’s blade through the man’s heart. He coughed blood, looking down at the weapon in shock. Some of the petals bulged, others half-withered. Most of them began to glow, giving off different hues of pale light from one another. As if in a silent breeze, the petals and leaves in the air churned violently, and the air pressure changed. It was like a novice had cut off a spell before its time, or like the caster of a spell not independent from his work were dying.

“I didn’t think so,” the drow woman said. She turned to walk away from him, back to the task of managing the dark crystal’s progress.

Still kneeling between the two drow males, the man sputtered and spat blood from his mouth. “Hey!” he cried, catching the priestess’s attention. With obvious pain, he went, even as she looked back at him, “This happens to us all, someday. Not even your – especially not your – goddess can save you from that.”

The woman’s face contorted in rage; her features reliefed horrifically in the light of the failing spell. She reached to the hip of a soldier beside her, and drew out his axe. She heft it high into the air and grabbed it by the haft as she brought it down, cleaving the man’s head in two, burying the blade of the axe as far down as his nose. The spell cut out instantly, the petals and leaves turning white and shrinking away into nothing in a flash of light. The air shifted enough to make a person quease – two of the drow in the chamber even vomited from the sensation. Omentus was sure that there were others out there who had reacted in just the same way.

The drow that had brought the man into the chamber began to haul him away, without removing either of the weapons from his body. “No.” the priestess barked at them, “Leave it there. In case anyone else wants to know what happens to his ilk.”

Following Khaz through the traps was not easy--my limbs were so tense that they did not want to cooperate. Once again, I had to trust that Khaz knew what he was doing, even though I did not. To think that I could die instantly with one clumsy step...

I became even more fearful when Khaz suddenly stopped in front of me. What was worse was when I saw why. There was a drow laying just in front of Khaz, if you could still call it one. Its body was twisted in ways that no corpse should be, though what was more horrifying was that it was not a corpse. Yet. The creature was somehow similing, lost in a world of bliss far away from its distorted body.

There...there are no words to match such cruelty... A deep sickness arose in me, along with a fear I had never before known. This was a sight so nightmarish that it did not belong in this world, or any other as far as I could see. This dark hole we had all been thrown into...I was right about it from the beginning. This was Hell.

But there was something more important to worry about right now. Khaz had fallen to the ground and started screaming, just as he had before. The contents of his stomach were now on the ground, too, only adding to the already awful scent of the corpse.

Now is the time. If I am going to do anything useful, I need to help him now...but how? I knelt down by Khaz, hesitant to touch him. People had always flinched away when I tried to touch them. But Khaz is not like that...he needs help...the comfort he offered me...I must return it...

I turned to the others quickly, motioning to the distorted body. "Someone do something about that...that thing!" I then reached to Khaz, carefully placing my arm around him, leaning in close to whisper in his ear as he had done to me. "Khaz, it is alright..."

What are the right words to say? 'Don't be afraid?' How can I ask that of him when such a thing is impossible? So I said the only comforting words I knew, the ones Hemanias had spoken to me. "I am here, Khaz. As long as I am here, nothing will hurt you. It is alright..." I gently stroked his face, hoping I could bring him back out of his nightmare. It was truly the strangest sensation to touch him like this, to be the one that attempted to calm him. I just wanted his pain to stop, to finally do something to repay his kindness. Just this once, I wanted to comfort someone rather than make them scream...

And then it happened. As if there was not enough shock to go around, the floating petals all around us suddenly lit up, then dissapeared in a flash of light. The sudden rush of air made me sick to my stomach, making my head spin at the same time. Is there anything worse that could happen now? Anything at all?

OoC: Character reaction, check!

OoC: I just found the perfect theme song for this RP. Check it out. Oh and for reference "nee-chan" means sister in japanese.

BiC:
He heard the girl whisper gently in his ear. “I am here, Khaz. As long as I am here, nothing will hurt you. It is alright...”

He felt her arm around him and her warmth in this place that was so cold. He turned away from his puke mess on the floor with the drow’s body behind him and pulled her against him tightly. His arms embraced her and her warmth and her soft wonderful body completely. His head bowed on the slope of her neck as he sobbed uncontrollably and his body trembled with his grief.

“Blaze,” he whispered with tremors in his voice. “W-wasn’t his fault—It wasn’t. He didn’t h-have to do that—He didn’t … He didn’t have to do that for me …! Blaze … I’m sorry … I’m s-so sorry.” He whimpered lastly.

He wanted it to be true. He wanted to believe her so much. That nothing could hurt him here, but his memories could still find him. He remembered holding Leita. She had just finished healing his face after Sori had finished beating him. She was crying, but he assured her with smiles.

“I’m okay, see? Nee-chan takes my hurt away. You make it all better, Leita. I’ll always be okay with you. It doesn’t matter what he does to me.”

And he always tried not to show his fear when his uncle would drag him away into his office to beat him. So that Leita wouldn’t worry about him. He just didn’t want her to cry anymore. He just wanted to her smile like she used to when they were kids. When their parents were still alive. When Hyrule was free. When there was no empire and dark elves in white masks. When there was no Lord Void cutting off his father’s head. When there was no Uncle Sori. When it was just him, his little sister, and his parents living together on the shore of Lake Hylia. When his father would take him out fishing and teach him the trade so that he could help him sell the fish in the market. When his mother would brush his hair even though it would never lie flat and tell him stories about the goddesses and great sages of Hyrule. When Leita and him swam through the lake on sunny summer days and giggled together at night telling secrets to each other.

He cried into Leonna’s shoulder, sobs still choking out of his mouth. It was so hard to keep going, but he always did it for Leita. The one thing left from his old life. But now they were separated from each other in this strange land and he didn’t know if the dark lords had got to her or not. He didn’t even know if she survived the rock slide that separated them from the rest of the group. He was stuck down here and didn’t know where to find her.

“It’s so dark,” he whispered to her. “I’m … I’m so tired … I wanna die but—” His voice cracked with another sob, “my sister—m-my Leita … I have to find my Leita … Leita …” he moaned.

He finally fell silent and just leaned on Leonna, feeling her warm, soft, and feminine body, listening to her heart beat, smelling her hair instead of the horrible stench that surrounded them now. Petals and leaves leaving flashes of light and then stench when they vanished.

The smell ravaged Rontu’s nose violently, so he breathed through his mouth and not his nose. He couldn’t scold Khaz for panicking. There wasn’t any way to stop him from doing so when he saw the body of this drow. He just hoped Leonna would calm him enough to keep him from fainting. They needed him still. They were all stuck in this maze without their guide.

It was easier to think of all these logical things. Distracting from the mutilated body. He had seen enough violence that it did not force a strong reaction from him. He was once a trained Scarlet solider of the Drow Empire. Such a weakness was far beneath him. But he couldn’t hate Khaz for it.

Because when they had infiltrated Hyrule Castle after they had been taken. It was Rontu who pulled Blaze’s ruined and mutilated body from the table. He had thrown his trench coat over him, so that they wouldn’t have to keep looking at all the things they had done to him. It was Rontu who carried him back to the forest they were hiding in.

And he knew Ren couldn’t scold Khaz either. They had stopped just at the edge of Kokiri Village, where Trisa, Blaze’s half sister waited for them to come back. He remembered how Ren had leaned his hands against a tree, head bowed as he prepared to go in and tell the girl he loved that her brother was not coming back to her. That just his mutilated form was there.

He had told Ren he didn’t have to do it. He would always remember what the half-dragon said in response.

“I gave up childhood when I killed a man … I … I told her he would be okay … I told her I’d bring him back alive … I’m a man now … I have to tell her myself.”

He was brought back from his thoughts abruptly. Whatever had given the mutilated drow that dreamy, blissful smile of his had finally wore off. A wail went through the room that was unlike anything he had ever heard. His gold passionless eyes went to the drow. The dark elf had started contorting, slowly at first as whatever drug he was on faded. And he wriggled and thrashed, pulling on his innards that hung above him, ripping open new wounds, blood drenching the floor.

Khaz whimpered sharply at the thing’s wailing shrieks.

“Ren,” said Rontu with a cold and sharp tone.

The half-dragon dashed forward and put a foot down on the dark elf’s skull. He crushed his head under his boot and it stopped moving. Ren stared down at it. His face hard and strangely expressionless.

OoC: Hope the song doesn't make this melodramatic or anything.

(OOC: Finally someone kills that thing. >.> I while ago I was also planning for us to pass by the mulitated drow, and that someone would kill him, but I forgot. No one deserves to find themselves in that form, even if it is in writing.
And the theme song works pretty well. This is probably the creepiest RP in a while.)


I was struck horified by the creature. Even if it was a dark elf, seeing anyone in that position could make some people lose the will to live. Whoever did this to him was truly mad. Perhaps even psychopathic. I was even more appalled when I found out that he was ALIVE. I could hear the rapid thum of his heart. Suddenly his only remaining eye snapped open and examined itself. It also felt what had become of it. It let out an inhumain wail through the chambers, thrashing and struggling like a fish out of the water. Ripping sounds went through the air as the innards hooked to the ceilling tore.

"Ren." Said Rontu in a cold tone. I winced as Ren brought his foot down on the destroyed drow's head. Yet even more blood was splattered across the room.

At least we we're here to end his life when he woke up... Though, we should have been here earlier to save him of his pain. Pain isn't just a method so you know when you're hurt, it's nature's cruel joke on life.

I heard footsteps coming from behind us. If they see us next to him, they may think we did it... It whispered in Rontu's ear

"We better get moving. If those drow comnig from behind us see this, they will most likely think we did this to him. They'll accuse you of murder which will most likely get us all killed."

I bent down next to Leonna and looked at Khaz. Using the calmest tone possible at the time, I tried to convince him to start moving again.

"Khaz, please... If you don't get up and lead us, those drow coming from behind will acuse us of murder. Then they'll capture us and torture us in possibly worse ways then the drow. Ren killed him, he won't suffer anymore. Please... Khaz..."

OoC: Nice music, Shrub! This is one scary thread...

BiC:

I winced at Kuldr's words. Torture was NOT a good way to get Khaz moving again.

And what do I have that is better to say? Do not panic? We will all be fine? Such a promise is a lie, and empty words mean nothing. I do not know if we will live through the next hour, and yet...

Khaz's grief was overwhelming. Though I could not piece all of his words together into something that made sense, I could feel the pain shaking through his entire body. I could not give up hope now...somehow, I had to find hope enough to get Khaz moving again, but where was hope in this dark place? The only thing I could think of that brought me the slightest glimmer of hope was Khaz himself. We needed him...I needed him...

"Khaz," I gently stroked his hair, awkwardly trying to calm him in the only way I knew how, "I know this is difficult for you, but I also know that you are strong enough to do this. You hear Ren talk all the time of strength, but he has no idea what real power is. Having the courage to face your worst fears, bearing the responsibility of those around you, being able to smile even when circumstances are at their worst; those are the traits of real strength, and each of them exists within you. Your Leita, Rontu, Ren, Kuldr, me...we all need you to be strong. I know I have no right to ask this of you, but please, Khaz, lend us your strength once more."

OoC: Short and corny. Hope it doesn't throw you guys off too much...

Her hand was so soft and gentle. So comforting. He wanted to believe her. They were begging him, saying they needed him. But they didn’t need him. They needed Takai, not him. All he could do was smile and lie. He couldn’t even fight anymore because of the blood. He was so useless. A broken mess of a person. Clumsy and stupid, and Rontu and Ren were here because of his foolishness.

“… I need you. We need each other. I need you to live for me … and hurt for me … Because I am too weak to do it. The girl speaks truly …” It was such a strange tone Takai used. Not quite his usual cool velvety tone. It was lifeless—empty.

It had always been that way. Khaz was the shield and Takai was the sword.

He slowly raised his head from Leonna’s shoulder. The drow were coming. They had to keep moving or they would die just like Kuldr said. Oh goddesses, he had had enough of death and suffering. He stood up, his eyes still looked distant, worn, tired. He bent down to grab his bag off the floor again. He did this numbly, not looking at the corpse next to it. And then he turned, slung the bag over his shoulder, and continued on, leading them forward quietly.

Ren moved along quietly but it seemed he was boiling with a silent rage. He hated drow, but what had been done to that man was just … sick. His expression continued to harden as the anger built up inside him. Just who had done that to the drow? There was another intruder in this underground. Obviously, he was no friend of theirs now.

Khaz continued on through the traps, moving slowly and numbly. Obeying Takai’s instructions mechanically. He went through the next door, leading the way across that room until he came onto another door. It was before this door that he finally spoke again.

“Rontu …” his voice was very soft. The drow stared at his back with his impassive eyes, though they appeared more solemn now that he stared at his friend. “Whoever did that … didn’t do it for the pleasure of hurting a man … He was looking for something inside him … Like he was studying it … Whatever he was looking for … He just … didn’t care to kill him after he was done …” His voice was strangely quiet and empty of emotion.

“The intruder …” said Rontu in return.

Khaz nodded. “But he’s probably dead now … ‘Heard fighting earlier … Don’t make a sound in this next room. Or the noise will release the insects that devour all that is living and that has ever once lived.”

Khaz went silent again, his attention now on the door in front of him. He turned the number dials just like he was told to. He turned the key in the lock and then turned the dials again. The door opened. He stepped through.

Yet again he was met with another dead drow at his feet. There was blood pooling around his body. The toe of Khaz’s boot touched it. He stared down at it. Takai moved his eyes around again. There was no visible slash through his clothing that told him how he had bled to death … The knowledge of his death came strangely to him. He was never really able to explain how he knew these things. He just did. He knew that it was not the shard of bone that cut his spinal cord that killed him or the crack in his skull. He was simply bled to death from being paralyzed. There was a crack in his armor but that was not where any weapon entered.

The magic that lingered on the corpse was … strangely familiar to him.

Khaz’s mouth became a thin line as he stared at the body. He couldn’t make a noise. Not one sound. But it must have been the same for this dead man. He had not screamed when he was attacked or there would be nothing left but his bones and the little creatures be would everywhere and swarming them already.

Oh goddesses … the blood.

He felt his stomach turn violently again, clenching. Khaz clasped a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t make a sound!” cried Takai.

OoC: Okay so … if anybody would like to make a loud enough noise to release the scarabs or startle Khaz enough to make him cry out … by all means, please do.

(OoC: Does anyone remember what the Red Queen said? Creepy little girl computer thing...)

Flaming cats. Ask any man from a small hometown, and he’ll tell you it’s a rumor mill. Word gets around there faster than a cat on fire. Heck, when something happens in your own house, the neighbor four blocks away probably knows about it before you get home from work that night. If word gets around so fast in a place driven by boredom, just imagine how quickly word must spread in drow society, where not knowing the latest news at every given moment could get you killed.

Naturally then, mere minutes after Omentus had been killed in the crystal chamber, most of the drow in the mountain knew about it. If someone didn’t know that there was no longer a reason to look for the intruder, then they were in danger of being incompetent. We all know what happens to incompetent drow.

Just to be on the safe side, the psychopath waited for another five minutes after his clone fell. He wondered if her corpse would ever be cleaned up; if anyone would ever discover this deception. It was possible, but highly unlikely. If they tried raising the corpse from beyond the grave, later, the drow’s intact mind might return to it. That would be hilarious.

He played with his new weapon. It wasn’t alive, but it could work in a pinch. Stable blade, spaced far enough apart from his fingers that he could still easily articulate them, but not so far that it would interfere with menial tasks. He blinked, turning his eyes white. So it is magical… I wonder what the enchantment is for. Obviously, anyone is allowed to use it, so it’s not a wielder’s ward. Poison, maybe? Sharpness? Hmm. Omentus thought while he waited. He took the preserved eye out of his hip pack and looked it over. Its pupil was very small, but not invisible. The iris was bright crimson, the color of a well-bred drow’s. Perhaps its last owner was from a noble house.

Not that it mattered. The drow point of view is that if one is dumb enough to get themselves killed, especially by a nondrow, that they probably deserved it. And if it was a drow that killed another, there was a complex hierarchy in the system of blame. Females were almost always higher than males, so females killing males really didn’t matter. The only time a male could get away with murdering a female is when the male was a noble, and the female was a commoner or a heretic. For this reason, hunting commoners was a popular sport among the males of noble houses. Everything changed if you were caught, of course. The drow didn’t do anything they could get caught at. On the other hand, if you weren’t caught, everything was fair game. In fact, if you could get away with breaking a law and didn’t, you could get punished for that. A cruel society, the drow.

Of course, there might be reasons that you would not want the brother you hated with the depths of your soul to die. Drow machinations were encouraged by the society itself, and any given one of them could have as many as a dozen or a hundred different devious plans in effect at the same time, each with a timeline that could take only hours, or up to hundreds of years.

A lieutenant could be promoted to captain, if his captain were killed for some reason. Naturally then, the drow lieutenant would want his captain dead. That meant that if the captain were killed, the lieutenant was investigated first, followed by any of his younger brothers – because a dead first born was no longer in the running for inheritance. If the lieutenant killed his captain and was caught doing it, or proved guilty later, then he was dead. If he got away with it, he was captain. If he had the opportunity to kill his captain and get away with it (perhaps by blaming it on his own younger brother, who ‘wanted to frame him for murder in order to succeed him for the inheritance’), then he could be punished for not doing so. Unless he stated that he had no reason to kill his captain. If that were the case, then it was assumed that his captain living a while longer was a part of one of the lieutenant’s machinations, because there was no such thing as loyalty among the drow. It was a conviction they were not capable of feeling. And of course, no one would question a drow who said such a thing, because it would be insulting to accuse another drow of conniving, and that was grounds for vendetta.

Well, that was enough introspection for now. Omentus figured that enough time had passed by now. If there was a drow still looking for him, then that drow deserved to die. He stood up, walked to the door and unsecured the locks. As he opened the door, he touched a line beside the frame. The lines he’d drawn all over the room – every foot of floor, wall and ceiling – lit up with a fiery light and began to pulse. The countdown was six and a half minutes. He cast Ignore Me, and felt his mana reserves begin their path to the wane. He blinked, turning his eyes teal and red again, using only the mix of the tiger’s sight and the drow’s.

Now the hunt would begin. The half-dragon had companions… those might be the best way to learn about him. If the prisoners were still in the mountain – and they were, according to the whispering dark elves – then that meant they were not trying to escape. Either they had a target here in the mountain, or they were after the crystal for some reason or another. They probably wanted their weapons back, too. Now, where were the weapons? Omentus thought as he walked down the corridors. Most of them, as he recalled, were in a holding room that was backed up by magecraft wards and by now, a powerful demon. Mostly likely, the demon had powers related to darkness, cold and spiders… that was very like the drow, but who knows? There was one weapon not in the holding room. The late Lady of Malstra informed him that they were intending to use the half-dragon’s sword as the implement of sacrifice. That placed the sword in the hands of the drow priestess most capable with such a weapon, in the crystal chamber. Where shall I search first? the necromancer asked himself.

My heart fell when Khaz stood again, despite the fact he had overcome his fear for the moment. His eyes were so empty, as if the warm liquid inside of them had dried into dark holes. His kind voice was gone, replaced by a hollow sound that knew no emotion.

What was I expecting? That he would jump up and skip through the rest of the traps? But I could not help it. I wanted him to smile again, for him to take my hand and assure me that everything would be alright. I wanted him to hold me again, to allow me to share his pain for just the smallest moment. Being with him was more than just a comfort...it made me feel like a human, a creature that could know more than pain. But now it seemed as if that human was dead, that Khaz no longer exsisted. I was being guided by a shell of what remained, the pure despiration to get out of this mountain, nothing more.

At least Ren was angry. I could see it in his face, pure hatred at such cruelty. Rontu was as apathetic as ever, and I began to wonder...had he once been like Khaz? Was there a time when he would have cringed at such carnage? Had the struggle of survival hardened him into the strange person Khaz had become, void of all emotion? I carefully turned this over in my mind, wondering what terrible horrors had forged Rontu into the man he was now...

When Khaz started speaking about why the mangled creature had died, the small hope within me entirely dissapated. We were probably lucky that the drow had killed the intruder before they reached us, inadvertantly saving us from such cruelty. And not only this, but now we had to go into a room full of carnivorous insects...it was just one awful thing after another...And here I thought we were past the worst of it. How stupid. Every step we take moves us farther into the darkness, only closer to the dark horrors that live within this mountain.

I was pulled from my thoughts as Khaz opened the door and stopped suddenly, his eyes turning to the ground. With great reluctance, I followed the path of his gaze, knowing it could mean nothing good. On the ground was another dead body, this time drowning in its own blood. It was impossible to say where all of the blood had come from--No wounds, and yet all of this blood...

Khaz clapped a hand over his mouth, the same fear coming upon him again. I was at a loss, knowing I could make no sound to comfort him, and unsure it would even work if I did. At any rate, whatever I did needed to be done quickly, before Khaz inadvertantly released the insects. I could already hear the creatures' scaly bodies scratching from behind the walls...

No. Now is not the time to loose it. Khaz needs help before it is too late! I crept over to him, doing everything I could to keep myself from shaking. With the same trepidation as before, I wrapped my arm Khaz, offering the support of my body. I tried to move him forward, to get him away from the corpse before it was too late...

OoC: No bugs are out tonight, Daddy sprayed them all last night And what's a Red Queen?

I left Leonna to deal with Khaz again, instead preferring to think about what the now dead intruder had been heading for. I could feel the pulse of the dark crystal thumming in the distance. The intruder probably been headed towards the crystal itself, judging by the direction in which he was headed. He could also have been the one who cast the spell with the petals.

I wonder if they offered him to Lolth? One with a mind like his could prove the worth of a hundred normal men...

We might have found out by now if Khaz didn't keep breaking down. At first he was having a panic attack, the he was confident and calm, then edgy and serious, and now back to being a crybaby. How did he manage to kill a noble and take his clothes if he coward at the sight of blood? And it didn't help that if Khaz screamed, we we're all going to be eaten alive.

I heard the footsteps of the same drow coming from behind us. Yet again they might accuse us of this person's murder, too. I was impatient to move on, but if Khaz made any noise from our efforts we would all die.

"Please, gods... Help us.." I muttered to myself.

OoC: After careful consideration I have decided not to release the scarabs … yet.

BiC:
He jumped a little at Leonna’s touch but managed to keep from making any noise, pressing his lips tightly together. He allowed her to guide him away from the body, taking comfort in the nearness of her. They moved ahead through the room, stepping lightly. Once they passed through the door and closed it behind them. Khaz stopped.

“Please … I just need a minute … They’ll be distracted with the bodies … need a minute …” he muttered to them, and then pulled out the water skin from his bag.

“Well,” began Ren, his tone dark. “Even if they do come, we could always just shove ‘em back into that room, give a yell and then close the door.”

First, Khaz swished the water around in his mouth and then spat it out. There was still the lingering taste of vomit in his mouth he wanted to get rid of. He did this a few times and then gulped some water. He sat down where he knew it was safe, and leaned against a wall, dropping his head and closing his eyes.

He just needed something to take his mind off it all. Just something else to think about, something else to immerse himself in if only just for a moment.

Meanwhile, Rontu was thinking about when they would reach the crystal chamber. Thinking back on what Adurna had said. Actually, he had only been half wrong. This plan can only work so far. He hadn’t told the high elf the whole truth. In truth, the priestesses who would most likely be in the chamber would recognize them. They were not so foolish as to not make themselves familiar with their sacrifices, which Rontu was sure was what they had meant for them to be. Drow just loved sacrificing to their goddess, and they were quite an irresistible catch. Especially when he considered this crystal business. If it was some kind of powerful and magical tool, it must have required a lot of their goddess’s favor to make it.

He had kept it to himself because he was still forming a plan. The more he thought about it the more dangerous and risky it sounded, but he didn’t think there was much else that would work. He couldn’t think of any other way that could work as well as this one … if he could just do it right. He’d be relying on a lot of luck and hope that his companions would act appropriately. He would need to plant a few seeds before hand though … just to make sure. And they couldn’t know anything about what he was really planning. He trusted Ren and Khaz would understand and do their part well, but the rest … he was not so confident in.

He turned to Leonna and Adurna. “In case anything goes wrong, remember that drow are averse to light of almost all kinds. If you get in a bad situation, just use a lot of light and fire magic.”

Ren sighed. “Makes ya wish Leita were with us. I got so used to her Insipid Artifice spell …”

“Don’t dwell on what you don’t and can’t have,” said Rontu. He himself had been trying his hardest not to think about her.

This place … it made him feel more like his old self. The one that had nothing before him but blood and vengeance. The one that was empty of hope and feeling. The one who had stopped caring, because in this world of the drow it hurt too much to care. The more they traveled through this darkness and around the drow … the more empty he felt. Like ice was growing inside him slowly again.

When he was with Leita he felt … whole again. She made him feel like it was possible for him to be a good man. His time with her in Hyrule had been like a dream. The most beautiful dream he had ever known. She was so beautiful. It wasn’t just her physical appearance. That would have meant nothing to him if she hadn’t possessed the soul that she did. Her soul lit up her amazing green eyes and enhanced everything about her features. He could get lost in that. Forget that life had ever once been so cruel, because those sort of things just didn’t belong around her. He forgot all those ugly and nightmarish things. He could wander off into the fantasy of her beauty and it would be as if such horrid things could never have existed.

Damn it. He had told himself he wouldn’t think about her. When he thought about her, the worry and fear gripped his chest. He didn’t know what he would do if the dark lords got to her.

Khaz looked up suddenly. He stood up and approached Leonna. He leaned in and whispered to her.

“Would you do something for me?”

I was glad that Khaz allowed me to help him, though the insects were starting to make my skin crawl. We were able to pass through the room without incident, stopping once everyone was safely through. Khaz had to regain his strength again, and it seemed that Rontu was once again forming a plan in his mind. Ren, of course, brought my mind back to the violent reality that I really did not want to think about. If we did indeed try to release the insects, there was a good chance that they would be able to eat through the door if they were as vicious as Khaz had implied. In my village, the giant spiders would have broken such barriers as easily as if they were made out of straw. But now was not the time to think of such things. Hemanias, Bren, the world outside...that would all have to wait.

I was surprised that Rontu spoke only a warning...it had felt as if there was more to be said. Still, if it was light and fire he wanted, that I had plenty of. As long as the others did not get in the way, my flame would consume anything that blocked our way. The thought was actually comforting to me, to think that I would be using an element that had once exsisted in this mountain against the drow themselves.

But there was something else strange about Rontu. I saw the look on his dark face when Ren mentioned Leita, a look I had come to know well. Such a thing surprised me, especially coming from Rontu, the most hardened of us all. It was an expression of longing, a painful kind of hope for something that made the whole world beautiful.

“I’m … I’m so tired … I wanna die but—my sister—m-my Leita … I have to find my Leita … Leita …” Khaz's broken sobs echoed in my mind, reminding me of this girl he had spoken of. She must have been amazing to have affected Rontu and Khaz like this--a true angel whose light reached them even in a place as dark as this. It was not difficult to see that she was where Khaz drew his strength from, and quite possibly Rontu as well.

A beacon of hope...a light in their darkness...

I smiled bitterly to myself, drinking in the irony. Here I was, a creature who had light and flame infused into their very body, but I was no light. I did not give hope to others, I consumed it, as fire consumes wood. Never was I meant to banish darkness...perhaps that was one of the biggest reasons that I was not a fairy. Fairies were gaurdians, protectors of the living creatures of the earth. My flame was a contradiction to this, destroying all that it touched...a quality of a demon.

“Would you do something for me?”

Khaz's voice suddenly tore me from my dark thoughts, reminding me that reality was still here and needing to be delt with. Once again, his soft voice made my skin tingle, as if electricity was running through it. I wished he would stop talking to me like that, always so gentle as he was...it kept making me doubt, making me worry...

But his words did something else. I felt my heart turn to lead, realizing how stupid I had been. Of course. He was probably getting upset by how much I was clinging to him. It must have been embarrasing for me to run to him like that when he was suffering so much. Now, in his too kind way, he was going to tell me to back off.

Still, I forced a neutral expression on my face, trying to appear unaffected. "Of course."

OoC: X.X Sorry guys, more angst...

He studied her unsuspecting face. She said yes without knowing what he was going to ask of her. She’d probably change her mind once he did. He knew it was ridiculous but it was the only thing he could think of. Rontu had reminded him of it. Remembered when he told him to keep his head in the situation and not on the girl next to him.

He glanced around at everyone else, as if he was not comfortable asking her there. So he took her hand and led her away. This new room was a literal maze of stone walls this time, but filled with similar traps as before. He took her into where the others would not see them and picked a safe spot to stop. But then he turned to look at her.

The old him would have done this differently. He would have wooed her indirectly. Leaned in forward, give her the full blast of his dark blue eyes. Put on the charm, that had always worked too easily. He knew women well. He knew them well enough to know that Leonna had never been called pretty or beautiful before. She had never received this kind of attention from other men. Because she hadn’t, she would be vulnerable to it. It would hit her a lot stronger than the average girl. She was starved of love and attention.

Knowing just that made his heart ache for her. He wanted to reach out to her, hold her, and tell her she was more beautiful than she would ever know. He didn’t know why she had never known this kind of admiration before. It didn’t make sense to him. She had knock-out eyes. Really, if she used them right, she would even be able to use his same trick on other men. She could have them dropping like flies for her. She was enchanting.

He knew it was bad that he was thinking all these things. Very bad. He couldn’t afford to fall in love again and break another girl’s heart. That was what he had done with Malon when he thought he could have a relationship. In the end, he trampled on the heart of a woman he loved dearly. He still loved her even now.

That’s why this idea was even more ridiculous, but he needed it. He needed her to take him somewhere else than this dark hole in the ground where bodies lied around all torn apart and bleeding. He needed to escape his own head.

He needed Leonna’s beauty. He wanted her to enchant him for a moment. This dazzling lost faerie girl. That was how she felt to him. Beautiful, magical, sad, and lost. Alone.

“Um …” he began, looking down at his feet and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. He still felt emotionally burned out. An exhaustion that weighed on his body in a different way than the physical. It made this harder. “Thank you for … helping me … earlier—for letting me hold you then … For … for your kind words as well … I probably wouldn’t have been able to get up …”

He peeked up at her for a moment and then down again. “I’m sorry to ask this of you … after all that … You can refuse, of course … I was hoping you would help me a little more … help me take my mind off some things for a moment …”

Okay, now he was just stalling. Since when has he been this awkward with women? Maybe it was like this because he wasn’t often so honest with them. It was kind of a new thing for him. He stopped for a moment, embarrassed at himself for what he was trying to say. He brought his hand up to pinch the bridge between his brows. He had to make this a little more appealing to her at least or it would be a definite no. He was being completely unromantic with this kind of talk.

So he looked up directly into her bright blue eyes and leaned forward. He placed his hands on the wall at both sides of her head so that she was between them. Khaz let himself just gaze into her like this for a moment. Allowing her beauty, the softness of her face to enchant him. His eyes narrowed at her softly, showing more of the honest vulnerability he felt right now.

“Leonna, I need your magic. Would you bless me with a kiss?”

OoC: Hee hee! Well, adventures would be no fun without a little romancin’. As cheesy as cheddar, right? Well, I love cheese so I'm okay with that.

(OOC: Anyone who doesn't know Khaz would think he was the biggest failure at romance from that post. )


I followed the others out of the room, pondering our fate. My feet were begining to ache from walking on the hard ground for so long. And worse, everything looked the same. How was I going to get out of here? Every corrider looked the exact same. The only reference point would be the dark energy coming from the crystal. But this place was like a maze. Not to mention the ammount of assasins and guards hiding nearly everywhere. Even if we did get to the crystal and managed to recollect our weapons, we would most likely die on the escape. Every drow would be looking for us even harder.

We could just be heading for our doom. If the drow could defeat that maniac intruder, they could easily deal with us... We're hopeless. The dark elves would crush any army we could send, most likely even without the crystal. We need light to battle effieciently. Caves, giant bears, spiders, armies of villainous drow and a crystal enchanted by Lolth is not something we can handle by ourselves. This probably isn't an 'Outpost' as we orignally thought. This is like some sort of hive. A hive that has darkness instead of honey. And murderers instead of bees. The crystal is like the queen. But in this case only an avatar of the queen. The queen is Lolth, giving power to the crystal. We're doomed. The dark elves set the humans up for their own greed. This has been one whole trick, this war, everything. The drow weren't planning to crush us using the humans as allies. They wanted us to think that, so we weaken ourselves in war. Then all they had to do is sacrifice the bulk of the people to Lolth. Instanteineous energy to the crystal. If that crystal awakens to it's purpose, we are like fruit flies trapped in the hybernation hole of a frog. Safe for the moment, but the second it awakes... Dead.

I didn't even notice it when Khaz pulled Leonna away. I was too busy facing our dilema. That crystal soon could have the energy to sustain a god, perhaps! It has so much energy, I wouldn't find it surprising if they wanted to embody Lolth herself into it. If that somehow happened than the WORLD would be-

I stopped myself. I suddenly realized that once again, my wandering mind had possibly explained something huge. If that was true... if Lolth could get an actual body and not just an avatar, no one would be safe. For the first time, I felt as if I was fighting a losing battle. There was no way out unless the crystal was destroyed early. But no one could do it themselves. An army would be crushed and would come too late. Of course, it was entirely possible that they weren't trying to embody Lolth into it... But knowing the drow that was unlikely. They would do anything they could to crush us.

I turned and gently lowered myself to the floor, crossing my legs. I should have been thankful the guards didn’t steal my brassard, as it was some defense, but what did that have against all the drow on the planet, and possibly a god! This was insanity. Or was I insane? It didn’t matter really until we we’re out of here. I think...


(OOC: I figured this out a bit ago. Most of the info for that came from Kuldr Adurna’s biography, assorted comments, and a lot from Omentus’s posts. Of course, this perhaps isn’t true. No one knows yet. :p)

OoC: Sorry it took so long; Forth of July celebrations and all...

BiC:

I was shocked when Khaz took my hand again. The sensation was no kinder to my body, intensified by the fact that I had been expecting him to do the exact opposite of what he was doing. He was in pain, he needed to sort out his feelings...so why was he pulling me away from the others?

Maybe there is a trap ahead and it needs to be burned? More spiders? But Rontu said they would not attack as long as he was with us...so why are we going away from him? Is it because...because he does not want to tell me in front of everyone else? He does not want to embarrass me...

Khaz led me into another room, this one full of stone walls. We did not move far into it, just enough until the others were out of sight. My insides were beginning to clench, all too nervous that I was alone with him. This left no distractions, no life threatening situations to keep me from dwelling on Khaz. Why could he not just get it over with? It was becoming more and more painful the longer he dragged it out.

Finally, Khaz turned to me, but his eyes were on the floor. He spoke awkwardly, nervously thanking me for my help before. Honestly, was it really so hard for him to speak the words I knew he would say? I was not made out of glass...

But his next request severly confused me. He wanted me to distract him? I thought that was exactly what we were trying to avoid. That was why we had to stay away from eachother—not only would it never last, but our lives depended on being able to focus. One careless mistake and we would be dead.

And then his eyes turned on me. The expression on his face was no longer empty. There was hesitation, worry...and longing? His eyes were full of it, this desperate desire to get away from this awful place...but there was something more, something I did not understand. He was looking at me like—

Oh no. Oh no, no, no! I could not let this happen, it had already gone too far! If I let myself do this, Khaz would recover soon enough, but me...this was going to haunt me forever. I needed to tell Khaz to stop before we both regretted it, but he was already leaning forward, and his hands...

“Leonna, I need your magic. Would you bless me with a kiss?”

My heart thumped so hard that it leapt into my throat. I knew I was supposed to answer him, but I could not even form the words in my head. It was so difficult to breathe...the best I could do was open my mouth, trying to speak but unable to.

Tell him no. Just say no! How hard can it be?

But I could not. I wanted this. Just for a moment, I wanted to forget everything like Khaz did, to forget that I was not human, to forget that this would never happen again, to leave this awful place, if just for a moment. Surely, the Goddesses could grant me just this one moment...

Unable to speak, I reached up to touch his face. His skin was flawlessly smooth and warm, just as I knew it would be. This blue-eyed man...I hardly knew him at all, and yet...both of us had something the other needed. This one thing I could give Khaz to comfort him...I wanted to give it to him...

OoC: And you thought you were cheesy, Shrub... And sorry I didn't include anyone else in this post. Leonna kind of has a one track mind...

OoC: Hooray for cheesy romance! And happy 4th everyone. And yes, you are quite right, Sticky. He was actin' like a novice in attempt to be honest.

BiC:
He could feel her answer through her touch, which was always so warm. He could see her answer in her eyes, which were just as hesitant as he was. Just as afraid to give herself into this as him. He felt horrible for doing this to her. It was completely selfish of him. But there was something about the way that she looked at him. There was an understanding. That this was just a one-time thing. There were things she wanted to forget right now too. That she just wanted to feel another’s touch as well. Something other than this dark and cold place.

So he leaned closer and gently brushed his lips against hers. Just his mouth at first, caressing hers slowly. Touching her this way made his chest hum, filling him with warmth, soothing the tired parts of him away, spreading through his body. All he could feel and smell and taste was her. All he could hear was his heart thrumming in his body. Her breath was oddly fragrant and sweet, similar to how her blood was. It was intoxicating. He felt as if he was being slowly drugged the more his mouth remained in contact with hers. His arm escaped and wrapped around her, pulling her against him, wanting to feel the rest of her body. His kisses increased in intensity as his urgency for more of her filled him. His mouth pushed her lips apart and his tongue joined them. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he should probably stop. But that little voice was quickly drowned out. As well as all the horror they had just seen and where they were at the moment.


Rontu and Ren, unlike Adurna, had noticed Khaz whisk Leonna away a little farther into the maze. The half-dragon rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded like, “’Can’t believe this …” Rontu, however, stayed quiet and thoughtful. They both knew what Khaz was up to, though Rontu had a little more insight about it than Ren did. He couldn’t blame Khaz either, yet again. There was a good chance they might all die soon. Might as well taste the pleasures of life one last time before facing almost certain death. So he allowed himself to think of Leita. Let the memory of her fill his thoughts. He prayed for her safety, but dared not to think too much about how she would deal with losing them like this. Her brother especially. They had always been close.

He smiled faintly to himself, remembering the old days in the Rebellion together. How he had given Khaz more than just his race to loath him for. He remembered those dark eyes narrowed like an arrow at him. Khaz never seemed to show any anger back then unless Rontu was around, and especially when he was around Leita. His dark blues eyes would turn deathly cold with a look that plainly said, touch her and you die.

He had never taken Khaz seriously back then. He had survived the empire and all the angry females of noble houses trying to assassinate him. What did he have to fear from some Hylian boy? He had also been fiercely in denial about Leita in those days, and what he was starting to feel for her. His first experience with Takai had been at Lake Hylia where they were investigating a drow base. Khaz had found him and Leita at the wrong time, and before he knew what was happening, he was ripped from Leita’s arms and throw into the shallows of the lake where Khaz proceeded in attempting to hold him under until he drowned.

Despite facing death again, he was calm. Death was nothing to be afraid of. There were far worse fates to fear, such as the poor man they had come across all those rooms back. Whenever faced with the prospect of death he was always remembered his father. Even when he certainly didn’t want to. He always remembered him because he was first faced with death because of him. Sometimes he wondered if Emon had been waiting for his mother to die so that he could beat him around as he pleased. It was never good to anger a female drow.

He remembered when Zeta Naix brought back his mother’s corpse, wrapped in black cloth. He watched his father from the house windows as he went out to the garden his mother had kept under a strong but ugly tree that survived the harsh desert of Delusuu. His father ripped up her garden madly. Tearing away all the green plants that his mother had poured her love and care into. Washing away the rare green that graced his home. He buried her there where her garden had been, at the base of that old twisted and gnarled tree.

It was a few years later when his father went out one day, bottle of liquor swinging in his hand next to his side and a shovel in the other. He dug another six foot deep hole next to his mother’s grave. When he was done, he went into the house to find him. Emon had beaten him weak and then dragged him outside to the old tree and threw him down into that little grave and left him there.

All he had then to comfort him were the old prayers and words of Elohim that his mother had spoken to him in secret. He was the son of a heretic. The drow in the empire never let him forget that. And that was why she was dead. Remembering those words now … he had always found it such a strange coincidence … that Khaz’s other personality had chosen to call himself Takai. In Sekin, that was the name of Father Death, one of the three Elohim gods. It was the prayers of the Father of Shadow that comforted him then.

“Into His arms, we return, within Elohim’s infinite embrace we are all one,” the drow whispered to himself.

Perhaps if he believed in anything, he believed those words.

Without the insane pull of the dark crystal this time, Omentus was free to walk about the chamber that housed the dark crystal. Oh yes, he still wanted to touch it, but it wasn’t an overpowering urge this time. He supposed that the drow in the room might have all felt the same way as he did.

Counting them from just one point of view, the seromancer managed to come up with one hundred sixty-eight drow in this cavern. About a quarter of them were milling about on the ground floor, others were either atop the dark crystal or on one of the stone walks about the chamber's walls. He could see the room in greater detail, now. A little further back from the center of the room was the dark crystal, its girth being almost twenty feet wide, and thirty two tall. Although it was somewhat teardrop-shaped, the crystal had a flat, faceted top, fifteen feet across, where a spider-shaped statue with a woman’s head had been shaped from the crystal. It was an altar to Lloth, and it was covered with the blood of countless sacrifices.

A priestess of obviously high station stood beside the altar, overseeing the progress of the crystal and everything that happened in the room. There was something unusual about her, too. She held onto a sheathed katana, an unusual weapon for a drow, and she directed people with it as if it were a scepter of rulership or station. From her belt hung her other weapon, the devastating bladed mace-like device known as the warstar. She was in direct oversight of the six shamannesses who worked and cared for the crystal.

Dark elves would bring bags of amethyst, onyx and black opal to a shamanness, who would in turn merge them together with their unusual magics, and then perform a rite that merged them into the dark crystal itself. It was in this way that the crystal must have began, and how it continued to grow.

The chamber itself was mostly circular, a massive two hundred sixty feet across and about three hundred feet tall. There were stone walkways that jutted out of the walls going all of the way up: one was about forty feet up, another was about ninety feet up, the next was about one hundred sixty feet up, and the last one was almost two hundred feet in the air. None of them had anything like handrails, or even low walls to prevent people from falling off. This made sense… if the room were somehow invaded, a primary mode of defense was to just push intruders off of the walkways. Any drow that happened to fall was a klutz, no questions asked.

Between the stone walkways that ascended the chamber, catwalks of hardened webbing connected one tier to the next. Any given catwalk was between eight and twelve feet wide, and no individual one climbed up or down by more than a single tier. One the first tier above the ground level, there was a single, special web bridge that connected the north side of the stone walkway to the top of the dark crystal, where the altar and the high priestess resided.

From here, Omentus could see that the crystal chamber also had more than two exits. On every tier, there were two passageways leading out of the chamber. After some examination, he found that there were truly only three entrances to chamber – one was on the ground floor, one was on the next floor up, and the last was on the second floor up. Every other passage was an exit from the room This made the crystal chamber a choke point. Anyone attempting to breach the mountain would eventually have to cross through the crystal chamber to reach the offices of the most important drow who dwelled here. The shamannesses’ quarters, the priestesses’ and high priestess’s quarters, and the barracks were all further inside the mountain.

The position of each passageway was also important. The ground floor entrance to the crystal chamber was on the east-by-southeast side of the room, just a little less than two hundred feet away from the nearest face of the dark crystal. The passageway that led toward the holding room for the escaped prisoners’ weapons, and the Lady of Malstra’s quarters, was on the the west-by-southwest face of the chamber, about two hundred forty feet away from the ground floor entrance. The second and third floor entrances to the chamber from outside the mountain were on the due southern side of the chamber. This meant that no matter where someone entered the mountain from, the high priestess would be able to see them coming from about two hundred feet away. If an intruder were not preternally fast, that gave her at least a full minute to shout orders for the defense of the crystal. Unless someone had a bow…

Omentus blinked, turning his eyes pure bone white. Various objects in the room glowed with a range of intensities and colors, but the necromancer’s only interest was on the crystal. A bright light of the colors pink, violet, blue, gray and red shone from deep inside the crystal, mostly obscured by the swathes of color in the crystal itself. Powerful magic, there. More important was the still, glowing curtain above the crystal, however. The curtain was thirty feet tall, and surrounded the southern two-thirds of the crystal’s perimeter. Its gray light could have been compared to a small bonfire. Impassively, Omen examined its oscillations and lambence. When he blinked again, returning his eyes to their proper color, the curtain was gone. No visible trace of the magic hung in the air. Mhm. Wall of force. Light and sound pass through it as if it weren’t there, but matter and magic meet an impassable barrier, Omentus thought, silently commending the drow on their judicious use of magic.

Slowly, the apothecary walked up to the northern side of the first stone walkway, and then turned to look at the ground floor entrance to the crystal chamber. If the half-dragon was not trying to escape, then it would probably be coming through that door, the same one that Omentus himself had come through his first time into the chamber. If the half-dragon didn’t, then Omentus could still see the other entrances from where he stood, Ignored by every drow around him. Whether it was after the crystal, its weapons or a target somewhere further in made no difference, as entering the crystal chamber was necessary for them all.

He could see more drow from here, too. As he walked about the room, he was sure that his original assessment was only about a third of the room’s dark elf content. Hanging from beneath the stony web bridges in the room were giant spiders, too. Some were simply of a larger breed, but some of the spiders were demonic. Gifts from Lloth. If a fight broke out, those ones would be like dreadnoughts. If Omen’s hunch were correct, one or two of the strongest among them belonged to the high priestess directly. Attacking her alone would be suicide for any but the most well-trained elf or man.

Omentus’ left hand found Beli on his harness; anxiety stirred in him. They would be here soon, his instinct was sure of it.

There were a million reasons not to give into the emotions surging within me, but when Khaz's lips met mine, reason ceased to exist. The touch of them was stronger than anything I had ever felt, a direct shock to my heart. Suddenly Khaz was the only thing that existed, the only thing that mattered. All I wanted to feel was him, the gentle touch that warmed every part of my body.

Khaz pulled me closer to him, his strong arms embracing me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, wishing there was a way to keep him from ever letting go. His warm breath filled my head as he kissed me harder, forcing all thought from my head. My hands twisted into his hair, reveling in its silky touch. Everything about him was just so utterly perfect...

And then I felt it. There was an intense heat building inside of me that finally snapped, breaking out of me like water from a dam. Before I could stop it, before I could do anything, the energy surged out, no longer under my control. The air around me was suddenly warm, and to my horror, I felt them spread out from my back.

Releasing my wings felt much like growing a new tooth. There was no pain, just a strange streching sensation, as if I was streching new limbs growing from my back. They glowed, too—I could see the orange light reflecting off of Khaz's dark blue tunic.

Oh Goddesses, no! Not now, of all times! I hid my face against the collar of his shirt, my arms refusing to let him go. It was too late now, to hide the monstrosity that I was. I did not want Khaz to fear me, to run like all the others had, so I closed my eyes, holding him as tight as I could. I did not want to hear him cry out, to call to the others for help, but what else could I expect?

OoC: I hope the whole wing thing isn't confusing...it might help to take a look at Leonna's chara profile if it is.

Khaz blinked, dazed and somewhat confused. Why did she stop? Though that little voice in the back of his head (not Takai) reminded him that they should have stopped a while ago. And then he realized something was glowing out of her back. His arms were still wrapped around her. He stared at the dragonfly wings on her back, blinking a little again. And then he smiled softly at them. He kept one hand at the small of her back and then lifted the other to gently touch one of her translucent wings. They glowed a warm comforting orange, like a camp fire on a cold night at Lake Hylia. She really was a faerie.

“Wow,” he breathed, really feeling she had taken him somewhere else. Somewhere uplifting and mystical. A place of awe and wonder. “Beautiful …”

Beautiful?

There was that word again, spoken so gently by Khaz. I could hear the awe in his voice, completely devoid of any fear. Why?

My wings twitched when he touched them, sending a shiver down my spine, as well as scattering my thoughts. For a moment, all I could do was lean against him, calming myself with his warmth. His arm was still snugly around me, as if nothing at all had happened. Such a thing felt...so surreal...

And then it struck me.

Beautiful! He thinks my wings are beautiful! I softly nuzzled Khaz's neck, something between a laugh and a sob escaping from my chest. Being so fully accepted, even liked...it filled me with such joy that I thought I would burst.

“Khaz, you are wonderful! So perfectly, incredibly wondeful!” And he was. This kind, handsome, courageous person I met in the epitone of darkness...and he had kissed me! Who cared if I hardly knew him? He was such a good person that anyone could see it a mile away!

And then I knew. I knew we were going to make it out of this. There was not room inside of me to believe anything else. This darkness would not last forever; I would make sure of that. Even if death took us...I would not allow the darkness to consume us. That I had power over.

OoC: Ah yeah, baby! Bring on the cheese! I get the award for the happiest post in this thread! Happiness does the weirdest things to people...