Private Tales The Old Ways

[Velkyn]

Once again the words were not met with a response, at least not initially.

The light peeking from beneath the crack of the door shifted once again. It danced back and forth for a moment, and then the door wiggled ever so slightly, as though something were now pressing against it. Xylthe would see the shadow now made in the light.

A figure was leaning against the door. "He might."

The voice said quietly.

"There is little doubt that he would take the bargain if you offered it." Xylthe would likely know the truth of that. She had spent time with Velkyn, saw how he was, what kind of a man he was. A promise like that would be kept.

At least if what she said was true. "But."

The voice interjected. "I don't think you should."

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe pushed herself up onto her hands and knees making her vision swim. After a few deep breaths she managed to force herself into a sitting position with her back slumped against one of the hard, cold walls. The position didn't help but it kept her from fruitlessly chasing the idea of sleep. If what the voice said was true she wouldn't ever reach it.

"Why do you care what I do? Who are you?"

 

[Velkyn]

There was a long, long pause.

This time it seemed an age. Xylthe could almost start to think that whomever she was talking to had left, simply gone. The only clue to the fact that she wasn't alone was the light. That shadow which cast beneath the door still staying in place. "My name is Senvid."

It was an old name, among the Drow, though it had fallen out of common usage almost centuries ago.

"I..." He frowned for a moment. "I don't know."

The voice admitted quietly. "I'm not..."

Hesitation. "I shouldn't be here."

He said, the shadow shifting.

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe frowned at the door and said not a word.

Up until now she had been torn between thinking the voice a figment of her imagination born from the torture she had been suffering during the day, or some trick being used by her Master to cause her to cave. When the voice had urged her not to give in however, the latter had seemed less likely. Now neither option seemed likely. Could it be this was a real person? A chance of escape?

She scrambled to her knees and pressed her hands to the door.

"Please... open the door. If I leave he won't get what he's after."

 

[Velkyn]

The shadow ceased it's shifting beneath the door. For a few seconds it remained in place, and then finally answered Xylthe. "You won't get out."

A sadness clung to the voice.

"This place is a fortress." The truth of those words could not be understated. The city had been built on the very edges of the Drow Empire. It had been meant as a bulwark, the final outpost to protect against the unknown. "They would catch you the moment you stepped out of this dungeon."

He said quietly. "And then things would just get worse."

Despair filled Senvid's tone.

"I don't know how he'd manage it." The voice admitted. "But he would."

Another pause. "He...I never knew...I'm sorry."

Sen said softly.

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe choked on a sob and rested her forehead against the door with her eyes squeezed shut. He wouldn't help her out and it was apparently impossible to die in here. What other options did she have? Was it merely a matter of trying to retain as much of her mind as possible? Maybe she could bargain for her death. Swift, merciful instead of whatever hell her old master would conjure for her when he found her alive.

"You speak like you know him well..." she sighed and shifted so she sat with her back against the door and her knees pulled up to her chest.

 

[Velkyn]

"I thought I did." The words were a quiet answer, almost lost between the thick steel of the door and Xylthe's ear.

Within them she would be able to hear the regret, the sorrow, the betrayal. It was unmistakable, and yet it made no sense. This place was a bastion for Velkyn. In her home he had come in like a torrent, cut in and destroyed in a matter of weeks what had take years to build.

Yet it was here that she found someone in his company that spoke with at least a hint of empathy. "I thought..."

The voice trailed off.

"I thought this would all be something different." There was something unsaid, something the voice did not yet offer. The light beneath the door flickered again, and the figure slowly saat back down. A mirror of Xylthe's position in her cell.

 

[Xylthe]

He thought...?

Xylthe raised her head from where she'd been resting on her knees to turn towards the door with surprise. This person, whoever they were, they did know Velkyn. From before he had become... this. This monster. Perhaps then he was a prisoner, if not in the same way Xylthe was.

"What did you think was going to happen?" the question came out a little harsher than she had wanted but her nerves and wits were frayed after the days torture and she couldn't summon up the empathy to care that this person had not gotten what they wanted yet still walked free.

 

[Velkyn]

There was a long pause. "I don't..."

No answer could have been sufficient, not after what Xylthe had been through. He knew that just as well as she did, and the venom in her voice was not something that he could hold against her. Beyond the door, in the pale glowing light, fingers wrung over one another.

"I'm not from the Underrealm." The voice admitted softly. "I was born on the surface."

Senvid said softly. "When I came here..."

He trailed off again, his voice becoming so quiet it was almost impossible to hear. "I just wanted to be with my people."

 

[Xylthe]

"And he let you live?" Xylthe couldn't have hidden the surprise in her tone even if she had had more of her wits about her. Velkyn had made his war on the surface and everything it stood for abundantly clear from the first moment they had met. The monster she called Master surely would have slaughtered this man if he had lived above, especially if he really was one of their kind, or a species who originated from the Underworld. He would have thought this man weak or a curse to their kind.

"Who are you? Who are you to him?"

 

[Velkyn]

"Why wouldn't he?" Confusion flickered through the voice, as though he didn't understand the question she was asking.

"I'm...I'm not anyone." Senvid said, his voice still dim through the door. "I was born on the surface, an Orphan..."

Unseen to Xylthe, his fingers slowly wrung against one another. Senvid had no idea why he was telling her all of this, why it even mattered. Yet there was a catharsis to the words that he couldn't quite deny. So he kept going, kept speaking. "I had to find my way here, to the Underrealm, and when I did he..."

His voice became quiet.

"He took me in, taught me about our people, what we should be." Another pause. "But...I never thought...not this...I didn't want this."

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe felt a sudden rush of pure anger towards this mysterious man. Why did he get the Velkyn who had a heart? Who cared enough about an orphan from the surface to take him in when he had nothing or noone? Why did she get the one who beat her and threatened her, who made her hurt people she had called friends to the point they were no longer the people she recognised? What had this stranger done right that she had done wrong?

She hugged her knees tighter to her chest and let the anger simmer so it chased away the tiredness.

"How does a man go from taking in orphans to burning a whole city alive?"

 

[Velkyn]

There was another long silence as Xylthe pressed against the door. It was a hard question to answer, and one that ultimately neither truly could.

"I think he was always the same person." Came the voice finally. "At least, with me."

There was a haunted way to how he spoke. As if he were realizing something even as he said the words. "I think, he saw something he wanted, and he took it."

Not any different than Velkyn had done with her city, her life, everything. There had always been a point, cruel and exacting. Never a thing revealed or shown if it could not be helped. For someone who had come to his door already looking, it would have been an easy answer to give.

"I'm sorry." The voice said softly. "If I thought it would do anything, I really would let you out."

As sorry of an excuse as it seemed.

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe sighed and hated herself for it, but she believed the voice.

The Avendrow said no more but rather lay down in the cramped box-like cell and closed her eyes. She knew sleep would not come in this torture chamber but perhaps if she could calm her mind into the void her people had trained her in all those years ago she could at least rest her mind. If her body gave out before her mind then she might still be able to win this battle.

In the end, Xylthe lasted seven days of agonising torture; a feat that impressed even her. Occasionally the voice came to talk to her again but aside from apologies there was little else she gleaned that was of help to her.

On the seventh day however, when the Reavers threw her at Velkyn's feet after two hours in the pool she whispered.

"If I tell you, will you give me the release of death?"

 

[Velkyn]

The old drow stood before Xylthe and stared at her. His expression held no hint of cruelty, not an ounce of anger or rage. It had all been there before, and Xylthe had seen the emotions as present as any other a hundred times in their short little while together.

Yet in that moment, he was a marble mask.

His eyes gave nothing away, there was no smile on his face. None of them wickedness of his deeds presented themselves upon him.

Velkyn should have looked like a monster, demented and torn. His soul was a wretched and shriveled thing, long given to the ancient Gods who wanted nothing but to feast upon this world. He should have appeared like the monster he truly was.

Instead he appeared as simply another Drow. The only mar he had a long scar over his eye.

"Of course." He said simply, his voice almost sound sympathetic. "As soon as I know you told the truth."

The Drow Lord answered. "I will happily end your life."

 

[Xylthe]

Water dripped down Xylthe's face so it was hard to make out if there were tears among them. Her whole body trembled from this war. From the strain on both body and mind. Yes, Xylthe was broken but not enough to not want to claw back something for herself. A clean death.

"I want a blood vow," she whispered. "A real promise you will do as you say. That you will kill me once you hold the Sisters in your hands."

At least then the darker monster would not be able to get her.

 

[Velkyn]

For a moment the Drow Lord didn't answer. He seemed to consider, as if it were a bargain one might find in the common markets. He frowned for a moment, and then slowly nodded his head. "Very well."

Some amusement played over his tone.

It was an emotion that had rarely shown itself in him before, even back when they'd been together in the city. To see it now was a small slap in the face, as though the threat here was almost amusing. As though something so important could so easily be laughed about.

"You'll have your vow." He said simply. "Tomorrow."

Velkyn's gaze flickered over Xylthe's shoulder. "I have something to attend to first."

His hand flickered in a wave. "Take her back to the pits."

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe stared at him in disbelief. For seven days he had tortured her. She knew he wanted those blades in his possession soon in order to further his own goals. Yet he chose to delay. To punish her. Anger rose to the surface enough for her to put her back a little straighter and tug - uselessly - against her Reavers hands.

"I curse you," she spat on the floor at his feet. "By the Goddess of the Blood Moon, she of Darkness and of the Night, may she take your soul whilst you sleep and bear it screaming to the Dark Lands," she snarled. In the Old times such a curse was one of the worst imaginable. It condemned the cursed one to an afterlife of torture and pain for an eternity. The Reaver at her back seemed to flinch.

 

[Velkyn]

"You're not the first." Velkyn commented absently, though she would be able to see the flicker of rage in his eyes.

It was clear that he was keeping himself in check. That the greater whole of him wanted to lash out and beat her within an inch of her life. A punishment that she would have more than deserved, but one he would not dole out.

Not yet. "Tomorrow."

He said with a bitter wave.

"You can suffer one more night in the dark." Why wait? What was the point? He had tortured her for so long. Now that he nearly had his answer the Drow Lord instead chose to wait. Why? What was the point?

Velkyn chuckled, bitterness ringing through the sound as he began to walk away.

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe snarled and the Reaver holding her turned her away before she could utter more foul curses.

The Avendrow simmered with rage the entire walk back along the corridors. It helped to clear her head of the dark thoughts that still clung to her after her torture in the fountains. The past hurts seemed frivolous and pointless now she was close to the end of her life. In an odd twist it liberated her; if Velkyn put her head back under the waters she wondered if it would work again.

Back at the cell the Reaver didn't have to force her in. She needed to think. Sitting with her back against the cell wall she pulled her legs up to her chest and gave a frustrated yell.

 

[Velkyn]

The sound carried into the void of the dungeons, not an echo or response to be found as the seconds passed.

It did not matter Xylthe's frustrations, it did not matter her anger or the rage she showed. Down within the darkest depths of the ancient Drow Fortress there was nothing; only the dark. In that eternal abyss time seemed to slow, and whether it was a night, or three, or even ten was impossible to tell.

But eventually that voice came again.

There was a quiet clatter against the door, the thump of someone pressing a single fist against the heavy steel. The knock rang through the small cell, hopefully waking Xylthe if she was asleep or catching her attention if she was still screaming in frustration. "Are you there?"

A rush clung to Senvid's voice, a paranoid flurry.

"I think..." Beyond the doorway, there was no light this time, no soft glow, just the sound of the Drows voice. "I think I know how to get you out."

 

[Xylthe]

Xylthe raised her head from her knees and stared blearily at the door.

"What?"

Had he said what she had thought he said? Had anyone said anything at all? The Avendrow still wasn't convinced this wasn't some trick by Velkyn to lower her guard and punish her further, for the simple reason that he liked to cause people pain. Now she had agreed to tell him in return for death he knew his time to hurt her was coming to an end. Yes it all made sense.

"You're lying to me, he sent you to trick me! Go away!" she accused.

 

[Velkyn]

"No. No!" Argued quickly, not wanting her to shout too loudly. Though the calls faded within the darkness, there was no telling who would be listening within the shadows. It was why he had brought no light.

"No, please." He continued. "Listen to me."

The urgency in his voice continued. "You'll never get out of here, not unless he wants you to."

It wasn't simply the dungeon, the bleak abyss in which she found herself in. Beyond this fortress lay a city, an all within were servants of the same man who kept Xylthe captive. Velkyn pulled the strings within this place, so the only solution was to leave it.

"You have to lead him to what he wants." Senvid explained quickly. "Tell him only you can show him, and once beyond the city walls..."

He trailed off.

 

[Xylthe]

"Oh I had never thought of that before," Xylthe said sarcastically and put her head back on her knees.

Velkyn wouldn't trust her word, he would make her take her to where she had hidden the Sisters simply so she was there on hand to punish if she lied. Maybe he would even use the Sisters on her first, though she surely would be a poor waste of the Blades gifts. What did she care if death was death?

"If I escape, he'll merely hunt me. Then I'll be running from two Drow bent on destroying the whole Underrealm," she said miserably, more to herself than the voice. "He's promised to kill me. It's the only hope of freedom I have now."

 

[Velkyn]

She was right, of course.

There was no stopping Velkyn or Xylthe's former master from chasing her to the ends of the Underrealm. The prize she held knowledge of was something men would, and had killed for. Her life meant little in comparison, at least to those who desired power. "No."

He told her.

"You can run." Senvid urged. "You just have to run to the one place they won't, or can't go. Where they have no power."

There was a short pause, then he finally finished. "The Surface."