I wish I could say English was my native language, or even my second one for that, but I hope anyone reading and reviewing this wont be disappointed, and enjoy it
I give you a short story, based on a world similar to Forgotten Realms, with unique but similar gods and races.
I'll gladly accept any feedback to help me polish my story, and writing for the better, if I've any future in writing at all
But for now, enjoy....
My mother was one of the advisors to the high priestess, but no prestige or honor descended down to any of us. My father's job was to handle the armory of the house's army. But at the birth of my last brother, he was ordered to be killed by my mother's wish for shaming her with a male child to end her line of offspring’s.
As a young female drow under the ruling of a powerful Matriarch I had to prove myself worth to the house. I was accepted to the war instituted in the city and began my training shortly after; I learned to fight with swords, whips, spears and other weapons. As time passed, my talents in melee proved decent, but not enough to continue and so after the first years I was able to pass with just basic knowledge.
This shamed my mother, already two of my brothers showed great talent in wizardry, and the rest of my sisters had trained into the way of priesthood, I and two more of my sisters were the only ones that practiced in the war institute. And while it was considered an honor to learn under the war mistress, I still could not prove myself physically stronger to challange the rest of my blood in a fair combat. The only talent I've seemed to have acceded at was memorizing maps and charts by heart. With only basic training in melee, I was instructed to guard the prisoners quarters. The more powerful you were, the closer to the matriarch you would have been assigned to guard.
But I can't say I didn't find my time near the cells to be without its joys. Often we toyed and tortured the "lower races", or so we were told to believe they are. But my hunger was not about to surrender itself to be caged forever with the mortal slaves. I knew of a position that would have proven me as a drow to my matron -- as a raid participator. Even though I lacked the proper battle skills to survive or knew the silent language, I knew that I would have been valuable as a guide through the puzzling tunnels with my memory gift.
And so I sought myself a teacher. Back then, I would have though it’s the Quarvalsharess herself blessing me, for I found one of the raiders as a tutor to the silent language and hone my skills just enough to let other thinks better of me. Several years after mastering the language, I was able to poison him and take his seat. My prowess still hasn’t improved much during my raiding times, but I was still able to navigate through each tunnel, knowing by heart where each trap was set according to the maps. When we reached the surface, I stayed hidden inside the cave. Waiting for hours until the party got back with spoils of war; slaves.
During my trips to the surface, my house began to rise in power. A secret war occurred between the fifth and the fourth houses, and after the fourth lost, my house became larger in power. Another blessing of the mother of darkness, we believed. The years passed, and a weaker house tried to destroy us, it failed., and the Matriarch gained even more power.
With armies of drows and slaves big enough to keep her safe for the time being, she began to sell small portions of her soldiers for other, more political purposes. And so I was sold to a weaker house, in exchange for half a dozen priestesses and I’ve became a simple guard again. This time I was instructed to guard the novice cleric’s chambers, and I followed my orders without questions. With weeks and months passing, I knew another drow had to die for me to find a more suiting position in the new house.
First it was the guard to the patriarch’s fourth daughter. I became instructed in guarding her chambers, but later one of her escorts found her way into the edges of my dagger. And so I wandered with the priestess in her daily chores, waiting outside the temple of Vierdri’ira for the cleric to finish whatever tasks she had. Later we would travel to the central of the city, to the Veldrin market for some trading for the house. Usually she bought new sets of enchanted robes and magical stones, but it wasn’t rare to see her buy elven children as sacrifices or even pay for information on the other houses.
The house in the passing time began to see itself better suited in a stronger position. How ironic that in its first attempt to grasp for power, it failed, which lead for a counter attack. Luckily before death came to my unit, the priestess had agreed an offer the matriarch of the attacking house’s offered and changed alliances, and took with her the rest of her guards, apprentices and two squads of goblin slaves.
I felt proud to be in the halls of a stronger house again, for the first time, odd thoughts came to mind. “Am I really that meaningless to be sold and traded again and again, without much care? Am I really that without value for not being chosen by the Web Queen as a priestess?”. The questions surfaced slowly to my mind. And my heart, like water falling on stone, began to show tiny signs of cracks. I was still afraid of the mind readers, so I did my best to bottle down these thoughts of betray and continued to follow the priestess, and witness more and more of the political struggles most priestess had with one another about the title of a high priestess. I somehow became thankful that I wasn’t chosen to become a divine follower. Their battles were powerful and disturbing; using chants of the same goddess to kill one another was horrendous.
It wasn’t long before another war was due. That time I couldn’t guess which house would win, but something strange happened. Hours before the hidden war, while the all house was in preparations the odd thoughts began to surface again. I began to wonder if my death would bother anyone, would the death of a hundred like me would make a slight change at all?
Unfortunately for me, the priestess had caught my thoughts, and sought to dismiss them. That was the first time I met the whip of a priestess against my skin, and as painful as it was, she promised more pain as soon as the invasion will be done.
I couldn’t have let it happen, I couldn’t let myself die. Not before I found an answer to a new question “Is there a place somewhere that doesn’t treat mere soldiers like pawns? Someone that might even say a short mourn like those I heard for the priestesses, or even the raider I poisoned back in my life?” I wasn’t going to let that question go unanswered, and that night, I plotted my escape.
Thankfully, in the preparation to the battle chaos echoed through the house. It wasn’t hard for me to slip into a couple of rooms, sometimes with lies, other with metal and steal two small vials and a parchment folder filled with maps of caverns and tunnels around the city that I wasn’t allowed to travel before, and maps that warned me where each trap awaited.
As the battle began, after the slaves' squads all died it was our turn – the pawns to charge. And so I did, I managed to kill a couple of other of my kin before finding my target. I scanned for the youngest and unskilled warrior around and let myself fall to her spear. But seconds before it actually impaled me, I was able to hold onto the spear and directed it into a none lethal spot, away from any vital organs. The pain was unbearable but I knew it was worth it. When two other fell on top of me, I used their bodies as shields to drink the first vial, I drank it all in two gulps and let it wash through me, closing my wounds and saving me from death.
I then waited and crawled when no one noticed near the pile of dead goblins and other slaves. I burrowed inside until the sounds of war to end. It took another couple of hours, but afterward, I heard the coming of a couple of soldiers. As expected, the novices were left in charge of dragging the slave corpses elsewhere and burn them, and while one was trying to pile up as many bodies in his wagon I rose for action; I used the spear still bloody from my own blood and shoved it through his shoulder, between his cries of pain I pinned the spear as much as possible into the ground, and finished with my boot in his face, to choke his words from alarming the others. But two others heard, females this time, the first came and I was able to use the momentum and her own charge to deflect her into the corpse hill, and while the second came, the male drow began to yelp and cry in pain again, making others to be now aware of the situation.
In seconds I slipped out the second vial and finished it, with its spell cloaking me, invisibility was the name of the affect, I ran past guards and corpses into one of the caverns that led to an exit. I walked for days through the new caverns, hoping to find someone that may answer my questions. Sadly, all I found was a temple Sulterio. The large, towering fortress towered above me. The gates opened and I was swarmed with grey dwarves all around me, shouting in their racial language and waving their weapons. Thankfully, as I started to try and explain that I have not come here as a spy, one of the dwarves understood me. He spoke my tongue because he often traveled to Olist Orbinn to sell armors and weapons in the Veldrin Market. We were able to come into a deal of sorts, in exchange for the maps I had with me, they allowed me to stay outside their fortress with daily food and water rations and even protection from other wandering monsters.
And so I lived by the grey dwarves, not the most pleasing time, but it was enough for the time being. A few months later, after hearing from the grey dwarf that spoke my tongue that another raiding party returned back to Olist Orbinn successfully with lots of new slaves, mostly humans, a second party came down the caverns. Strangely, the party was made out of humans, a few elves and surface two dwarves. All were covered in gold armors and silver weapons, and at that time, when my knowledge on the surface gods was minor, I did not know that the group was composed out of a joint party of Toran, Rofirein and Vorax’s knights, paladins and priests. Followers of the Triad of Justice.
They headed down into the grey dwarves fortress after being lost in the caverns, asking for directions on where might that drow raiders headed with the humans slaves. The dwarves, in spite of their hate to all of them, were not prepared for a battle and settled into offering me as a guide to Olist Orbinn. The way they saw it, either drows or surface followers would have died, a win-win situation anyway.
I then was taken prisoner, bonded under metal chains and shekels I took them to the cavern entrance to the city. It felt odd, even though it felt like I had to escape, shroud the area in dark and use it to kill off at least the elves in the party, I didn’t seem to feel any hate to them. After a while we reached the entrance to Olist Orbinn, I waited safely at a remote location and waited. Just as I have did when I lead the raiders into the surface.
Several hours later, the knights and priests returned with the slaves, by the look of it they were successful, but they did encounter much resistance. One of the knights caught my attention; I noticed that the human was crying…. I asked one of the elves in their native tongues, and he informed me that he was mourning for the lives of his squires, and the rest who didn’t make it out alive.
This caught me surprised….who would have thought that I will find my answer back in the entrance to my home city? It was all moving too fast, the surface walkers ordered me to quickly navigate them to the surface, and I obeyed and did so. When we reached to the Duergars fortress they planned on letting me go free and return to the dwarves’ fort, but I refused. I wasn’t allow to let my answer slip away so fast so I allowed myself to remain their prisoner in exchange for guiding them through a safer and faster route to the outer realms.
When I finally did lead them up into the upper world, luckily it was night. The men began to split and return each to their own temples and homes. I remained with the man I saw mourning before, one of the elves agreed to also follow as a translator between the two of us as we made it back to his temple. When morning came I cried in pain, my eyes weren’t prepared to light and so I was forced to follow blindly. Even so, I didn’t stop from asking questions, why did he care so much for lives of those that were lost? From what I saw based on their armors and colors, they weren’t the ones in charge, hardly, most likely novices that hoped to gain some experience.
Before he even answered, the topic quickly changed onto me, he asked me why wasn’t I in the city itself, why did I agree to help him, and even more, why did I refuse to stay in the underdark. I told him on my questions and all that happened to me since becoming a simple guard in the fifth house.
He told me of the values of life, even after we made it to his temple, and even though I was still bound as a prisoner he continued his speech. As days passed, I learned more about the ways of Toran, his words were like drugs that I couldn’t have enough. He told me on the ways of the surface world, and even on my own race, and how he was heard by another on how we were born out of hate into murder. That night I mourned and wept, not for my past deeds, not even for the color of my skin, but for all those like me; Children that would be born into hating blindly all others, especially the world above them. And those that will simple be lost, meaningless pawns that not one will notice.
And by morning, my heart became the heart of a Torantie, I spent my days inside the temple, mostly out of fear of the sun and my black skin, I began to read more and more of Toran and his teachings, and listen to the priests in the temple pray for spells and guidance. The priests became used to my presence, as I was into living a caged life inside the temple, day and night I couldn’t bare myself into leaving.
For more than half a century I saw priests and knights come and go in the service of Toran. I saw many squires become knights and then turn grey with time, and my heart ached to be one of them. But I knew I couldn’t, I was too afraid of shaming Toran with my skin, what would people say if they saw a drow in the service of the deity of good and truth? I prayed to Toran near his alter, out loud I asked for some help to tell me of what I should do, but Toran did not come. Rather, the head priest of that time heard me; he took me in his arms and told me that Toran would love me for spreading his truth, and if it's my skin that troubled me, then I should not have worried much. With an armor baring the colors of truth and honor to shine over my body, no one will be able to see past into my skin.
His words told me of what I had to do. After getting my hands on thick robes colored in gold and silver, and a clay mask dyed blue to block my skin from being seen, I offered myself to the paladin of the temple, the one that first introduced me to Toran. I was a warrior more than I was a priest, chants and rituals were not part of my heart, but to battle for what is right, I knew that in me and that day I gave myself fully into Toran, and was accepted into the first step as a just and true warrior under the blessing of Toran, the all watching martyr. After taking my vows, I shed my pasts and walked straight as a new person, Iilzetrahd’yah. The left hand of God.
