It's been a long time since I've seen home. The images still glow on the walls, eldritch eyes and slithering creatures, some of the few things that break the constant gloom of this city. The view is decent from the catwalks in the foreign quarter, and I lean on the wall and watch the water down below. I don't go much further inside these days, unless I need to talk to J'Axx at the guildhall. There isn't much for me.
I remember leaving for the first time, though. All of us--not us, dark elves, but us rogues--have our tales of beginnings. There's something less than common about the way we step onto our paths; even here in the dark underground the young teir'dal aren't particularly conditioned toward hiding in the shadows and stealing the prize. I see priests dragging sacrifices back to the big temple of their lord, our father of hate...I see the shadow knights and necromancers come and go in grand procession, and the Spurned step in and out the sidegates under the suspicious watch of the guards. We are closest to them, I think....the outcast spellweavers, but this does not make us companionable.
My parents live in the Third Gate area, among the merchant shops where most of those who lack noble blood tend to congregate. I suppose I should say 'lived'; the last I heard of them was that Mother had challenged Father at long last over his male impertinence (though he is a priest, and she a shadow knight, something that always made living with them a strained situation) and they had it out under the watchful eyes of the priests, in the arena. I can only theorize what happened...my little sister Tanelenae ran away then, as far as I've heard, and as she followed Mother's footsteps I have to assume Mother was the one who died. I wish I could be sad--
But that's such a light thing to say, isn't it. Anyway, I'm not.
It's hard to be a rogue here. We're given some respect from the other guilds, I suppose...our base is seated fully within the Third Gate, not on the Commons fringe like the sometimes-heretical Spurned. We're not into the politics either; only ill has come of that anyway, though it's funny to see a Spurned wizard stalking necromancers through the streets with little fear of retribution from the priesthood. But it's not a priveleged position. It's where you go when you can't do anything else.
"Not strong enough to be a warrior," said my mother, "or smart enough to follow me." She always sneered, and played dice with her pet, and seemed to ignore my father as much as possible when they weren't being more intimate than I cared to see. I don't know what it is with teir'dal women and sex and weaponry, concurrently, but I've had to wash more bloodstains out of the bedclothes than I care to--but I think that's a little too much. I don't think my father ever even noticed it, even though I'm pretty sure--I'll stop now. It's even making me feel weird.
"Decidedly not wise enough to join the priesthood." My father would look me over, stern, cold. So I had a tendency to get myself into....trouble. So they had to fish me out of the water by the Blind Fish one day because I was trying to get a closer look at that halfling, or the time a Dread Guard Lieutenant dragged me all the way back from....well, from Lavastorm Mountains almost, because I was following one of the golems. It was safe! I didn't see a problem. Oh, and trying to jump off the catwalks. I got good at that eventually, but I have more than one bone that's healed a bit crooked because my father refused to "indulge stupidity".
Living with my parents was always strange, to say the least. It was an unusual set-up. He'd taken her name (after a lot of initial badgering and threats with sharp knives toward soft parts, as I've been told) after the accident that was me happened, so by all rights I should call myself Furiel T'Run. They were adventurers together, which is the cause of a lot of accidents, but somehow they'd managed to not kill each other despite an apparent mutual dislike for well on forty years. Probably had something to do with my father not wanting to go back to the den of vipers that was his own family, though they were of a bit higher blood. Priestesses overrule priests, after all. He must have liked to be the one at least somewhat dominant.
It wasn't a hard life...they'd both come back with plenty from their adventures. Mother did a bit of bladecraft on the side, and father of course did his work at the temple. A lot of it. Probably tried his best not to come home, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't either if my mate seemed to show more affection toward the skeleton that followed her around than to me. And I mean that kind of affection. Like I said, female teir'dal disturb me. I think it was a human skeleton too, which really made my father irritable.
It was my supposed lack of wisdom that got me to the point where I am now...swinging my feet off the catwalks and trying to see if I can just....maybe...fish that helm off the guard's head.... They just don't make fishing wire strong enough around here. I found Bristlebane before I found the Ebon Mask, or maybe it's the other way around and they found me. Probably that way, since I've been told I have all the sense of a cat in a burlap sack. It's a good trick, making them think you're a fool, but it's a problem when you're not sure whether it's really a trick.
There were too many pieces of cutlery flying around the house for my tastes that day that things changed, so I went out. I was determined not to get caught by the guards again, because they were keeping an eye out for me now that my mother pitched a fit at them for letting a child into Nektulos forest. I don't think they really cared one way or the other; I did my youthful best to sneak past them but I'm pretty sure they just let me go and hoped a bear would eat me so they'd be rid of me at last. Keeping up with the golems is a little difficult when your legs are as small as mine were--not to mention their tendency to outrun me any time something living that wasn't a teir'dal came into range--but I managed well enough. I passed by the gap that led to the volcanic region that way and restrained myself from 'exploring'. Jumping in the water, fine. Jumping in the lava...that sounded a little stupid even to me.
Then there were voices. Very faint ones, just tickling my ears. The golem lumbered on, ignorant, and I--again, not being the wisest, thank you Father--tiptoed away from it just in case it suddenly decided that it was supposed to take me home too. Darting and disappearing amongst trees isn't difficult in Nektulos, and as I made my way through the voices got louder. Light, chattery things, speaking in some tongue I couldn't begin to decipher. I had just slid my way behind a thick tree-trunk, able to see a strange ring of stones and some small shadows now, when someone cleared their throat behind me.
Turning to see that the fellow wasn't much taller than me at all--if he even was--and that he was a good deal paler and carrying a mace made me speedily realize that this was a Bad Thing.
I didn't scream. Teir'dal children learn from the start not to scream, not from anything...not when you get a cut, not when you break your leg in sixteen places, not when your mother decides to practice her needle-torture techniques on you to make sure you'll grow up strong and tough, or some other excuse. I did go boggle-eyed and contemplate falling over and pretending to be dead...I remembered something like that vaguely from my parents' adventure stories, but I had a feeling the halfling wouldn't believe it. So I did what anyone else would do: I bolted like a rabbit.
Didn't work very well. It seemed there were more of them than just the one with the mace, and I had my first experience of just how heavy a tiny little halfling really is when they dogpiled me. I ate a lot of dirt in my attempts to swear at them and call down the almighty wrath of Innoruuk--as if he'd listen to a brat like that--and shortly found myself hoisted up by the collar in the middle of a circle of halflings, all grim-faced and armed. I couldn't for the life of me think how they'd gotten there! Weren't the Dread Guard supposed to do something about that? There was one of them standing apart from the others, looking amused, but he was the only one who seemed to think it funny. I sort of swung in the biggest one's grip and sulked. I had no real concept of death as Something That Happens to Me A Lot then.
The others were all talking rapidly in their weird language, the first one gesturing with his mace in my direction repeatedly, and I started getting the fact that this was still a Bad Thing and not just a tussle, when the one who'd been standing apart spoke. His voice was different...strangely resonant, and the others turned to look at him in shock as if they hadn't realized he was there. The halfling holding onto my shirt let me down, and I straightened out the collar and tried to brush the dirt off in vain. Mother was going to skin me for this all, one way or another, I was sure.
The odd one stepped in, and the others parted for him. He stared at me for a moment, that mirth still dancing in his eyes, and I crossed my arms and gave him that "I'm a teir'dal, foolish lightie, bow down to me" scowl that my father does so well. He chuckled and cuffed me upside the head, then said something, and the world spun. When my eyes cleared, I found myself staring at the back of a Dread Guard's cape, at the mouth of the tunnel back home. My head tingled a little where the halfling had touched. The Guards stirred restlessly and one of them glanced back, and his eyes narrowed; I took that as my cue and ran back into the city.
The tingle had faded by the time I reached Third Gate. My mother's pet collared me just about as soon as I was through the door; apparently it had been set to watch for my return. I found myself hoisted up by the collar for the second time that day and entertained brief notions of kicking the skeleton but decided that would be a bad idea, since it had already picked up cheating at dice from my mother so would probably know to throw me into the river too. So I hung there as the skeleton hauled me off to Mother, who was in the kitchen, picking up cutlery with obvious disdain. Usually cleaning was Father's job but he refused to indulge my mother's temper, which never made things better, and she didn't seem particularly interested in picking up the knives anyway. She took one look at me and scowled, and I was pretty sure I was going in the river one way or another."You've been out in the forest again, haven't you," she said. I looked innocent, which was a little difficult with leaf bits sticking out of my hair. She sighed and waved for her pet to put me down, then paused. Her green eyes narrowed, and the skeleton's fingers tightened my collar; I hung onto the neck of the shirt to avoid strangling. Mother kicked aside a cutting knife, which when skittering away along the stone floor, and brushed my hair back a little from my face with very gentle, very careful fingers. I started getting nervous.
"Arrykhe," she called back, with a faint, peculiar smugness in her voice, "come see what your son has done."
There were a few long moments of silence, then the creak of a door somewhere down the hall, and my father slid his way into view, looking less than pleased. He gave my mother an irritated glare, and she gave him back a close-lipped smile and motioned to me.
It took my father no longer than an instant to notice whatever it was that my mother had, and his eyes flared. The next thing I saw was the floor, and a couple of Mother's pet's fingerbones clicking down on the stone beside me. Pain came a second later, flashing through my skull, then through my ribs as a plated boot found home. Then I was hauled up again, this time by the hair, my father's snarling face an inch from mine.
"You little traitor," he hissed, fairly trembling with rage, his red eyes just narrow slits; I saw his other hand curling at his side and tried to squirm but he had me tightly enough that I couldn't slip the blow. The world was bright and starry for a second. "We're going to the temple, K'lara," he said over his shoulder as he started pulling me along. "Now. And do not call him -my- son."
I've always hated the temple. I'd been brought there ever since I was born, I think, and once I could toddle along I dragged my feet as much as I could when a skeleton wasn't dragging me instead. It always felt strange. We were told to hate, and we did...we'd all sit there and hate and hate and hate, while the priestesses carried out their ceremonies and flayed whatever unfortunate light-dwellers happened to wander into Nektulos or get in front of the raiding parties. I rarely had a clue what was going on, but it's hard to sit there for hours and hate thin air, so I'd stare up at the image of Innoruuk and hate hate hate along with the rest of them. Hate Innoruuk, hate the priests, hate my parents, hate the temple...hate the sacrifices intermittently, but usually they weren't around long enough to get a good hate going against them. But one of the things I remembered vividly was a day when it wasn't a pale-skin who was vivisected, but one of ours. I don't even remember what he was brought in for, but I was sure it was some kind of heresy, and the only heresy I could even concieve of, then, was dealing with the halflings.
My mother and father were still yelling at each other, and the angle that my father had yanked my head to showed my the cutting knife, right in reach. I pulled it over with my foot, flicked it up from toes to fingers, and stabbed my father in the leg as hard as I could.
My father yelled in shock, losing his grip on me; my mother burst out laughing even as she commanded her pet, and I bolted. The streets of Neriak never seemed nearly as treacherous, or labyrinthine, as they did that one night; every corner hid a guard or a priestess or a dead-end. I smacked into the greaves of an ogre while stumbling down one alley and got completely turned around, thinking I heard shouting always somewhere behind me...Father rousing the temple, Mother calling the guards, anything. I found myself, gasping and bleeding from the nose and still clutching the ruddy knife, at the edge of the water and a little pathway that led to the Lodge of the Dead; the ghouls grinned at me in their leering way, and I was sure that any moment a horde of necromancers was going to pour out of the mouth of that tunnel and blast me into little blue bits and make my bones dance forever for fun. So I jumped in the river.
It was tempting to just sink down and let all the air just dribble by and expire. It was really the only thing I could think to do. I'm afraid I didn't act very grateful to the teir'dal who fished me out, what with spitting water and trying to jump back in then clinging to his boot and crying like a baby, but surprisingly he didn't try to drown me himself. He took me back into the city a little way, to a place my mother had always told me not to go: a curious structure with statues of dark elves to either side of the doorway. And thus, I found myself miserably dripping water all over the Hall of the Ebon Mask.
I'm sure you know how it goes from there. What my parents saw didn't interest the rogues, and I became one for lack of other options. It kept me alive, at least; the next time I stepped out onto the streets, the guards glowered at me, but they held their blades in check because I wore the badge of the Ebon Mask. I was a sanctioned heretic, not just one running around causing trouble. Even the priestesses took note of it. I doubt my father has any such problems with riling the rogues, though, so I stay as far away from the temple as I can. Neriak isn't a comfortable town for me...oh, the ghouls still seem welcoming, but that's about it. Even my guild doesn't really care for me. As long as I do my job and don't stray from this path, and don't screw with the other teir'dal, I can continue to breathe freely here, but I have a feeling that time's running short. What's excusable, even endearing in a child can be the death of a man.
I'm not quite done here yet, though. After I get what I need from this city....we'll see.
--end--
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