Private Tales When Fire Meets Shadow

[Azrakar]

Azrakar stood motionless for a long breath, the fire's glow catching in his crimson eyes. The haze of heat around him thickened, curling upward like smoke from hidden coals. Then the corner of his mouth lifted in a faint, rueful smile.

"As my lady commands."

The glamour unraveled in a rush of warmth that rolled across the camp like a sudden updraft from a forge. His borrowed drow form stretched, darkened, expanded into shadow.

Obsidian skin hardened into jagged plates. White hair ignited into a crown of living scarlet flame. In heartbeats he towered twelve feet tall, a colossus of shadow and ember, cloaked in swirling fire that cast the snow around him into steaming mist.

The goblins dropped flat to the ground with whimpers of terror and awe.

Azrakar, the Hollow King, regarded Vyx’aria, voice rolling out deep and resonant yet still measured with dark courtesy.

"I am Azrakar, Lord of the Deeps beneath this mountain."

Shadow engulfed his form again. He took a new form. One less likely to damage the calm of mortal creatures. Merely eight foot tall he stood, normal skin of might night black etched in runes. His horns where the crown of flame had been.

She had been insistent. He had to respect that, even if he thought her determination slightly foolhardy. He glanced at the other drow with hungry eyes. He wondered if she was thinking she had slipped an experience that she might not have survived.

"You sought the source of the fire in the deep. You have found it."

"Now we may speak plainly to me. What do you want?"

 

[Vyx'aria]

While others recoiled, goblins throwing themselves to the ground, her human mercenaries scattering in alarm, even Lysdania springing back in dread, Vyx’aria stood tall amid the firelight and rising steam, her cloak unmoving, her chin lifted.

Not even the crown of living flame, nor the thunder of Azrakar’s molten rebirth, made her blink.

She drank in the transformation with a quiet, calculating admiration. Her breath slowed. Her expression turned...pleased. She had only heard stories and legends of coming face to face with a demon.

So, she thought, he was posing as one of us. Playing at shadow and subtlety, sniffing out my strength like I was his. Perhaps he thought to crush me, if I proved weak, just as I thought to take his forces for myself.

Her grin widened when the colossus shifted again, the great Hollow King reshaping himself into something...slightly less monstrous, yet no less divine. Still a head taller than any drow, his new form shimmered with midnight flesh etched in infernal runes. The horns curled like a crown wrought of conquest.

"That’s much better," Vyx’aria purred aloud. "Now you look as exquisite as you smell."

Her words hung in the steam like incense, rich with reverence and hunger. "Why would you ever hide such beauty?"

She glanced to the side, to the groveling goblins and the trembling surface-folk behind her. The contrast delighted her, how quickly they knelt when true power revealed itself. The hint of majesty and they fell like wheat in the wind.

One day, she mused, I will see cities like that. Kingdoms. Realms of sunlight and sky, bowing beneath the banner of my House.

Her gaze returned to Azrakar, her expression alight with purpose.

"I am Vy'xaria of House Tor'Rahel," An esteemed house name even he would have heard of as it descends from one of the founders of the Drow city of Zar'ahal, "I seek the realms above," she said. "No more caverns. No more petty squabbles in the dark. Our talents rot beneath the stone, wasted on whispers and backstabbing cousins. I mean to change that."

She took a step closer, unafraid of the heat rippling from his form.

"You’ve hidden under a mountain. I intend to rise over it. Conquest by choice or conquest by fire, I care not. But I will see the surface kneel."

Her voice dropped, velvet and venom.

"Surely, Hollow King... you have ambitions beyond hiding beneath the earth."

And in her eyes, it wasn’t just a question. It was an invitation. A challenge. And the promise of a world reborn in shadow and flame.

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar regarded her in silence as the steam curled between them, his molten eyes narrowing with slow, deliberate appraisal. No fear in her. No reverence that bent the spine. Only hunger.

He finished settling into a form more suited to conversation: tall still, broader than any drow male, skin like polished obsidian veined with faint crimson glow. Curved horns swept back from his brow like a warlord’s crown, and living embers drifted in the wake of his movements.

The heat he radiated softened to a bearable warmth

When he spoke, his voice was deep and resonant. The goblins kept their eyes down. It sounded like a rumble rising from the mountain itself.

"House Tor'Rahel," he repeated, tasting the name with evident recognition. "Old blood. Ambitious stock. I remember when your ancestresses sacrificed surface elves on altars of black glass."

A low sound escaped him, almost amusement.

"You stand before a lord of the deep and speak not of bargains or submission, but of partnership in conquest. Bold."

His step closed the gap between them. He was close enough that she could feel the subtle thrum of ancient power beneath his skin.

He lifted his huge hand and brought it to her jaw. It was a deliberate mirror of the way she had touched him as she left the fire.

"Would you seek my submission?" he asked. "If my ambitions were not aligned to your own?"

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria did not flinch. Internally, her mind ticked with calculation and the familiar hum of paranoia, an instinct honed over decades of war councils and knife-edged court intrigues. But her face remained a mask: serene, impassive, practiced.

His touch was warm, unsettling in its gentleness for a creature cloaked in power. From the corner of her eye, she saw her Drow warriors stiffen, hands twitching toward hilts, instincts honed from centuries of subterranean treachery.

"Would you seek my submission?" he asked. "If my ambitions were not aligned to your own?"

Vyx’aria kept her gaze locked on his, molten and bottomless as the caverns beneath them, and slowly, a crooked smile spread across her lips. “Submission? Perhaps,” she said coolly, “if I one day want you to kneel and show me all the uses of that silver tongue of yours.”

A sharp squeak erupted from somewhere behind them, one of the goblins, evidently not expecting such scandalous words. Vyx’aria didn’t spare it a glance. She let the tension linger a moment longer before gracefully slipping back from Azrakar’s reach, her cloak whispering against the stones where the snow melted away as she moved.

“Though, unless you sprout some silly, tragic hero’s delusions,” she added, voice rich with velvet sarcasm, “I suspect our goals will remain aligned well enough. If they don't… well, I’ll cross that bridge should we arrive there.”

She tilted her chin slightly, appraising him anew, less as a threat, more as a potential prize.

“But to conquer the surface,” she continued, tone turning sharper, more imperial, “I require more than blades kissed by moonlight and relics that fade under open skies. The sunlight frays our magic, dulls our legacy. I will not march to war armed with brittle heirlooms.”

Her eyes narrowed faintly, conspiratorial. “They say there is a vault nearby…the Vault of Khazar remains sealed. That its treasures were hoarded by goblins, wealth surrendered behind some great gate. You command these creatures, tell me, have you opened it?”

A flick of her fingers to the groveling goblins scattered behind them.

“If not, then perhaps we take it together. You keep what bolsters your horde. I’ll claim the artifacts, the weapons, the enchantments that no goblin hand will ever master. You have no use for mortal trinkets.”

Her smile deepened, dark and silken.

“You’ll have your goblins. I’ll have my weapons.”

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

Azrakar’s eyes flared brighter at her words, a low rumble of amusement vibrating through his chest like distant thunder. The shadows across the snow danced from the flickering flames, but now they seemed to bend to his presence.

"Silver tongue," he echoed, voice a deep purr laced with dark promise. "Careful, Queen. Some fires burn hotter when stoked."

He lowered his outstretched hand. He folded massive arms across his chest. The goblins remained prostrate. Her followers, by contrast, seemed on edge. Azrakar paid them no mind. His gaze stayed fixed on Vyx’aria, appraising her boldness. It was difficult to see if he approved.

"The Vault of Khazar," he repeated slowly, recognition kindling in his molten gaze.

"Interesting. I have heard of it, but it is well beyond my domain."

"I will bring a proper host if we are to bring them to heel. And you might speak of what may happen with tongues, but I suspect you are far too accustomed to docile drow males to make a pact in the infernal manner."

"I suggest we simple agree on this deal woth words, lest your lackies have to carry you into battle."

 

[Vyx'aria]

Vyx’aria chuckled, and it was not a scoff or the cold curl of sarcasm she so often wore, but a genuine sound, low and velvety with amusement. The firelight caught in her crimson eyes, glinting like rubies.

“Come now, Azrakar,” she said. “You’ll get me too excited, and I might forget my cause entirely. That wouldn’t do.”

She leaned in slightly, voice dipping into something sultry and wicked. “A pact sounds dangerously like a commitment… Perhaps I’ll want a nice little sear instead of being engulfed whole,” Her smile was all teeth now, the kind that promised pain or pleasure, depending on which side of her one stood.

Without waiting for his answer, Vyx’aria reached toward the spit beside the fire, tearing a roasted leg of meat from its haunch with a swift twist. She sank her teeth into it, tearing the flesh like a queen feasting after war, utterly unconcerned by appearances.

She licked a drop of grease from her lip before glancing toward the huddled goblins.

“We leave later tonight,” she declared, voice sharpened once more with purpose. “One of your little creatures surely knows the path.”

Azrakar

 

[Azrakar]

"Still, if you survived you would not have forgotten it," he chided, unable to quite leave the game there. She teased, but he knew her threats to be hollow.

"Nothing... In half measures."

He turned towards the goblins and barked in their gutteral tongue.

"I want fifty more goblins with plank shields. A retinue of orcs from both Grazkhar and Rannan. I want bags of burrow-belchers."

They might not have been fighting dwarves but fighting in their tight tunnels required the same approach. Goblins forward to soak up arrows. The strongest orcs for the hammer blow. Rolling, smoking, flaming bombs. For any that dug themselves into the tightest tunnels.

"I know the way," he corrected. "I will send the first wave and the last wave."

Shadow wrapped around his form and he was a drow again. Few remembered his reign, but he didn't want to risk any knowing that he had returned or that he was out of hia domain. Not yet.

 

[Vyx'aria]

The fire had burned low by the time the last goblin had scrambled to obey, the last order barked, and the last pack lashed shut. Vyx’aria oversaw the cleanup with a glance, silent as her warriors moved like wraiths with calm efficiency. No songs, no banners, no glory-hungry fanfare. Only the quiet clink of gear and the whisper of blades returning to sheath.

She stepped beside Azrakar as they began the trek, her stride unhurried but poised, nobility in motion. Behind her, the Drow phalanx moved in ordered silence, each warrior falling into formation without command. Scouts flanked them, melting into the ridges and brush, dark eyes scanning the horizon for signs of movement of beasts, bandits, or worse. She almost hoped for it.

The mountain range loomed above them like a slumbering beast, its jagged peaks veiled in mist. Vyx’aria’s gaze swept across the landscape. She tilted her head slightly toward Azrakar, her voice smooth and low, a private murmur between two monsters.

“So, princeling,” she said, eyes fixed ahead but her tone laced with intrigue, “does your strength wane the farther you step from your lair?”

She didn’t expect an honest answer. Not from him. But she didn’t need one.

Her gaze flicked sidelong, studying him from beneath dark lashes. The way his shoulders carried weight and fire. The rhythm of his stride. The slight tension that coiled in his form, like something chained too long. Drow didn’t need truth to read a man, even if it was a demon posing as one. They read tension. Posture. The hesitation in breath, the arrogance in motion. And in this, she was more than adept.

Azrakar