The Dulcet Tones of Butt Jazz

And yet, she was alive. She was sure for a bit that she would die anyway, and death was not something she feared. Her masters were, and they'd proven themselves worthy of fear since she was merely a child. The multitude of scars, burns, and blemishes inflicted by them over the years to ensure loyalty had turned her body into a patchwork of colors and markings. The mental visions they'd forced into her brain to show her what the world would eventually be had left scars of a different kind, forcing her obedience because there had never been any hope.

And yet, someone who had been her complete enemy had stuck to a deal that she had been fully intending to break. Either he was brave, or stupid, or hopelessly hopeful.

"Why did you let me live?" she said after a while, figuring it was he outside the door. If not, well, maybe whoever it was would indulge her. "You had every reason to kill me. Hell, I've killed for less." ----- It repeated every now and then. There'd be a break in the conversation or one of the humans would drift off to sleep, and then Gul'Irin would give him that curious little smirk and shake her head. She seemed endlessly amused by his actions, but at least she'd been accepting of his decision and the stubborn way he was defending it. Defending the woman behind the door. Or defending all those outside against her, depending on how one looked at it. He saw it as a little of both.

When he voice sounded, muted through the wood and softer than her previous shouts, he didn't immediately answer. The others, though, were alseep or occupied elsewhere, the archer running a little patrol through the other rooms to be sure nothing came creeping up on them.

"Because I said I would." It was that simple for him. ----- Her astonishment was giving way to cynicism at his naïve nature. If he was going to live in this city, in this country even, he would have to wisen up. No one told the truth, especially no followers of Baphomet, or servants of demons. Lying got them this far and it would keep getting them farther, and if he didn't learn that he was going to end up dead.

But what did she care about him?

"What does that matter? Words are cheap. What if I get away? What if I come back later? You're going to trust me that I didn't lie or anything like that?" ----- "No." It was all he gave at first, but decided some explanation might be in order. "Your information will be checked with the knowledge that it may be false or lead to a trap. That is not relevant." He shifted, sitting sideways in the chair against the door and speaking directly toward it so that his voice would carry less to the others.

"I would have killed you if no arrangement was made. If you resurface, I may yet. You are dangerous." It was a statement of fact, meant neither as compliment nor insult. "Perhaps you will ambush us, kill us. More likely if you try you will injure or kill some and fall to the others. But this has no bearing on whether I will honor the agreement struck."

Again he let a brief pause go by. "I do not reccommend seeking vengeance. A second accord is unlikely." ----- She scoffed at his words, shaking her head against the door. "I'm evil, not stupid. You think I'm gonna try and track you down? You came into my home, killed my servants, took my stuff, broke my fingers, and threw me into my garbage disposal."

"I just...don't get it. It would be nothing to you. It would do you a favor in fact. Agreements and honor and pacts have no place in this world, because only fools abide by them." There was a pause as she considered something.

"Why do you care about keeping your word?" ----- He was genuinely glad to hear she'd not come after them, though of course her words and intent could very possibly not line up. He'd have to be ready just in case. He had no desire to kill her, and certainly none for her to kill him.

The barest amusement touched his features, as it sounded almost as if she were trying to persuade him to open the door and kill her. He had offered her the choice more than once before she'd forged an agreement with Gul'Irin.

A long enough silence followed her question that she may have doubted that he had an intent to answer at all. Or perhaps he'd fallen asleep. Dra'Nath had to think about that one for a time. It was his natural inclination, but there was likely a reason buried within him somewhere. After a bit, he found it.

"Because it is mine. My actions can be controlled. You have demonstrated that. My body can be destroyed, my mind dominated. But what I freely choose? That is mine and no other's. I will not sacrifice that, let another or circumstances decide whether I keep my word." ----- Silence followed his words, as it had preceeded them. His words were running through her mind, and what he said was true - she had the magic and power to dominate the minds of others, however briefly. She had the martial skill to make them obey her, or she could kill them. She had learned from the masters of pain and trickery (though trickery was far from her forte) on how to get the fear of others, but here...it wouldn't help her.

What she did, she always assumed she did of her free will. Yet, if she did what she did out of fear of pain and torture, was that really free will? Was that really her free choice, or was it simply the easiest one?

"Have you always been able to choose?" ----- Memories flitted through the half-breed's mind, caverns a thousand times deeper and more vast than anything this complex had shown him. He'd never been a slave, exactly, but his fate had seemingly been chosen and set long before he was born.

"No."

A frown had his brow turning down. Was that true? If what he'd just said about circumstances held, then even there it had been his choice whether or not to live honorably.

"Yes," he corrected, a little haltingly. "But I have not always exercised the right." ----- She perked up a bit at his negation, then his correction changed that, but she could tell it wasn't as simple as just a yes/no. Her question had clearly been a bit more complex than she had imagined it would be.

She picked up a small bone, examining it in the dim light provided by her spell, and tossed it farther into the back of the room, where the amoeba was still turning into a puddle of lifeless mush. "Wasn't it easier to just do what you were told? What didn't hurt?" ----- "Much," he confirmed. His gaze fell over Gul'Irin, still plucking out a quiet melody. But she was beginning to drift off as well. She caught his crimson gaze and smiled, though again she shook her head at his chosen guardpost.

"Which, I suppose, is why most beings never stop." The whole of Zirnakaynin seemed trapped in that manner. Always just circling about in whatever social circles they were born into, trying desperately to keep up with changing circumstances and the plots and chaos of those around them. She, however, had chosen to leave. And she'd brought him with her. There was something to that, even if she didn't exactly share his outlook. ----- "You weren't scared of those above you? Of what they could do?" Her voice was a little pleading, trying to find some justification for the life she had lived thus far, for the fear and the cowardice she had showed. Granted, she'd always been able to reason it. It was better than death, and she had on some base level enjoyed the acts that she had done under their command.

Still, to deny that she had never doubted it, or thought twice, would be a lie. It had rarely happened, but it had. ----- That the question rolled in while his gaze was on the drow seemed apt. She had never exactly been a cruel overlord, though. Not to his perception. And by the time he developed into who he thought of himself as then, they were worlds away from any of the cuthroat politics of their heritage. He'd actually risked very little by adopting his current philosophy. There was only the danger of sticking to it, the woman he conversed with being a prime example.

"My situation had changed," he confessed. Possibly not what she was hoping to hear, but that mattered little. "I was in roughly as much danger as I am now by following this way." ----- She chuckled a few times, not dismissively, but the chuckle of someone who laughs because to cry would be too revealing. "That'd be nice, wouldn't it? The situation has changed. It's that easy?" She couldn't think of it. To just go off, do what she wanted, be free of her captors, her tormentors, to throw off their burdens and pain and scars and be free...it was an impossible dream. They were too powerful. They would win eventually, she knew it, she'd been shown it.

"Is it the same danger?" ----- "As the darklands?" He shook his head, before realizing the gesture was meaningless through the door. "No. It's more sporadic and unpredictable here. Though less constant." He wasn't sure that was quite what she'd meant.

"Is there some subject you are hoping to get at?" ----- "I'm a dead woman.  Or, I hope I'm dead.  It'd be preferable," she replied through the door.  "I don't know-" and then she cut off.  She was going to call him by his name, but she didn't know it.  "...what's your name?" ----- It was curious. She hadn't seemed to much fear the pain or death the priest had leveled her way, yet she had struck the deal, rather than accept either the capture or execution the half-drow had offered. Yet now she seemed to be somewhat afraid of... the superiors she kept alluding to? He didn't have enough information.

Regardless, she had given them her name, though only under duress. It seemed an even trade. "Dra'Nath." ----- "Dra'Nath.  I don't know what I'm getting at.  It's been a pretty bad day, and the mongrelmen weren't always good company."  She sighed, rubbing her face with her not-broken-fingers hand and trying to relax. Relaxing, however, was proving to be rather difficult, and understandably so. "I guess I'm just wondering what would drive people who have every reason to kill someone to not, deal or otherwise." ----- "Not every reason," he corrected. She'd been beaten, defeated, and at least for the moment was no threat. While that didn't preclude execution, by and large the half-drow's killing came in combat, not after. He didn't revel in it that way. Still, she'd tried to kill them and her existence remained a liability. "But reason enough, yes."

He shrugged, shoulder rolling against the door. "I do not know how to explain it better than I have. Perhaps I did not wish to become that which terrorized my young life." ----- His last words made her pause, and she thought them over and over, trying to know if that was subconsciously what she was trying to become. Perhaps it was not just demons that enjoyed tormenting the young and helpless.

"What was it like for you?" ----- He frowned yet again. Just the day before he'd been reminded of his first decade and a half of life, walking the streets of Neathholm. Now he was being asked to revisit it again. He didn't want to. But the impulse to hide from his past was irritating, so he pushed ahead if only to spite it.

"I was born in Ghenavoc, the lowest level of Cocyrdavarin, which in turn is the largest of the three caverns that comprise Zirnakaynin. It is the oldest and largest drow city in all the darklands, or so I'm told. Most call it the greatest city. Some of us disagree.

"Ghenavoc, the cavern floor, is the lowest in every sense. I do not recall a day without fighting, running, or both, trying to hold onto what meager food and life we could scratch out or steal. Drow, humans, orcs, troglodytes, some other creatures, all desperate to climb onto the backs of those around them, to escape it all.

"The nobles largely ignored us, save when they grew bored with their political games and would send hunting parties. My only experience with them was death and rape, until I met... the female who accepted your offer." He would not let her have Gul'Iri's name. It wasn't his to give. ----- Their stories, she found as she listened, were not that dissimilar. Details were varying, yes, and his masters and tormentors were drow and not demons, but her own upbringing had been similarly distasteful and filled with horrors. It was not a story she was keen to share, but he had indulged her.

Yet, she had never met some female, as he had. She had never met anyone who cared enough to pull her out of the ranks of the demon worshipers - the only life she had ever known.

"What, did she fight for your honor or defend you against a rabble of would-be murderers?" Her tone was not harsh, though her words had a certain bend to them. ----- "Hardly." He shook his head. The notion of her defending his honor was strange, alien. "A band of three males. They meant to use my mother. When I protested, they killed her instead. I struck them, one of them mortally. and that should have meant a death sentence. Worse, probably. I raised my hand to nobles, my fate almost certainly to become a sacrifice to whatever demon lord their house served."

He knew little of the specifics regarding the great houses' practices, but demon worship was hardly a secret. "But she... intervened. She killed the three nobles, leaving no witness to my crime. I expected her to kill me as well, but she didn't." He huffed. Most of the parallels the human was drawing went unknown on his part, but this one he could see.

"I have followed her since, and we left the darklands shortly after." ----- Chances are their demon lords were one in the same, but she didn't want to ask. Baphomet was hardly exclusive to the Worldwound.

"They sound familiar. Much of the demon servants are the same. Chaos, killing, pleasure...whatever they want to do, they do." She sighed and leaned her head against the door with a very slight thump. "She could have, but she didn't kill you. You and your party seem against it. At least in some cases. Do you ever want to go back there?" She figured she knew the answer, but she could ask. ----- Again he made a meaningless gesture, shrugging this time. "I avoid it without reason," he responded to her comment on the group's attitude toward killing. Tiresias seemed almost bloodthirsty in his passion for payback, but Dra'Nath knew little of the man beyond what he'd observed in the past few days. The others perhaps less so, but they made no objection to the priest's actions. But then, neither had he.

"To Zirnakaynin?" His answer was plain in his tone. "Never. There is naught there for me. I loathe your surface sun, but I'd sooner let it burn out my eyes than return to deal with my kin." ----- "They sound like they'd fit right in with the demons."  She figured her insult wouldn't provoke too much ire, given how he seemed to feel about them.  "I thought I would be excited by today, or whatever day it is, when they finally overtook Kenabres.  I thought it would be a day I could finally return to the surface.  Now, though," she said with a sigh, "I'm not so sure." ----- "The drow never have," he observed. It wasn't quite the same situation, but it seemed somehow relevant, if her ideal was to rejoin surface society, to point out that it was not something the dark elves had accomplished. "And they've served for millenia. In my limited experience, serving demons never gets one what one wants."

He paused and shrugged again. "Unless it's bondage, I suppose." ----- "The ones that serve demons do so out of either fear or greed," she spat out. "No one does it with good intentions. Your limited experience is more than enough."

"And," she said after a short pause, "I've never been much for bondage. You'll have to talk to my master for that." The irony of calling that man her master and speaking of bondage was not lost on her. "What are you gonna do now?" ----- Some part of the half-breed thought he should seize on the conversation thread and see what he could learn about her master. The problem was he didn't care all that much. So far he had no plans to try and take on the whole of the worldwound. He'd follow Gul'Irin, and he suspected she'd want to get as far away as possible.

So instead he only kept silent until her final question. "Sit here, keeping you in and everyone else out." Again, probably not what she'd meant. He could be irritating that way. ----- Her expression could have withered what plant matter was left in the garbage chute, had she been looking at it, but she just shook her head.  "All night?  What, do they want to break more fingers?" ----- "All night," he confirmed. He didn't need to rest and recover any froofy magical ability. He'd be a little worse for wear the next day, but he'd live. "I don't know their plans. Or yours. Which is why I'm sitting here." ----- She chuckled at his last words. "Rot, mostly, and think of what to tell my master. I'm considering saying you beat me into unconsciousness before robbing me blind," she said sardonically. Come to think of it, that was rather close to what happened. "Who knows? Maybe I'll get off easy and only go through half a day of pain spells." ----- "That is your choice." He shrugged again. If she wished to throw away what life had been granted by continuing on as she'd been, that was her prerogative. "But you're a fool and coward if you make it." ----- "Choice?  It's not a choice, drow. If I run, they can follow me.  If I hide, they can find me - through means magical or mundane.  If I had choice that I knew would work, I'd get off this continent." ----- "If you had a choice you knew would work, it would require no courage to take it." He showed no offense at the inaccurate racial term, nor much emotion at all, only pointing out that her retort did nothing to rebutt his observation of cowardice. "It's always a choice." ----- She was fuming, but she knew he wasn't wrong. She had been a coward, leaving her servants to die while she attempted to flee up to the surface. She had been a coward when she had spoken up to their questions, hoping they could kill her rival and leave her alive. She had been a coward when she hadn't just killed herself already, and here she was because of it.

"...you're not wrong. I am a coward." She drew he knees to her chest, curling up and wrapping her arms around her legs. "But what can cowards do besides run in fear?" ----- His voice remained even, clinical, neither comforting nor condemning. "Being a coward is also a choice." ----- If she hadn't heard his story, she would've exploded at him, telling him that he didn't know her life or what she had been through. She would've lambasted him for calling it a choice when she had no other one except certain death. She would've been able to justify her actions, her thoughts, that it wasn't worth fighting against her master because all she had done before was useless.

But she couldn't, because of what he had told her.

She didn't really know what to say to that. "I don't have some lady ready to swoop in and save my life, though. It's not that simple." ----- "No, you don't."

It was all he offered for a time, lapsing into thought. She hadn't given him much of her story. He hadn't asked. But what little she revealed in the wake of his recounting of his own dark past had him feeling something. He hadn't anticipated that. What would he have been if Gul'Irin had never stepped in, taken him under her protection?

A sacrifice, his entire being likely condemned to torment for eternity. It was an unattractive alternative.

"If you choose to accompany us, I will keep the others from harming you. Deliberately endanger us, and I will not hestitate to kill you. Perhaps we will see what may be done about your former master." ----- "That wouldn't be good for your lifespan," she said after a short time.  "And can you really hold back the others?" ----- "Perhaps," he allowed. Nothing had managed to kill him yet, but he was still young. "As for the others, the only one that matters will, I think, accept my decision, though I anticipate significant rolling of her eyes. The others will acquiesce or not, and I'll deal with them as necessary." ----- "...you're really serious about this, aren't you?"  She sounded like she was expecting him to laugh and say he was just kidding after all, like this wasn't happening. ----- 'Yes." Once more his gaze fell across the ebon-skinned woman. "It's been said I am not much one for humor." ----- She was silent for a while. A long while, while she thought about it.

"Okay," she finally said. "I accept." After a few more seconds: "...does that mean I can get out of this garbage room?" ----- "No. Rest, sleep if you can. Retrieve your spells." He wouldn't soon forget that she wielded some form of magic, nor how dangerous that made her.

"When the others rise, I will explain the situation and settle any disputes. For now, everyone is safer with the current arrangements."

Frowning to himself, he decided some calculated risk would not be unwarranted. Fishing out some of the rations he carried, he stood and moved the chair as quietly as he could manage, easing the door open enough to hand her the hard bread, salted meat, and dried fruit as well as his canteen. ----- "Fair enough," she replied. She did, after all, try to kill them.

Taking the rations, she whispered a "thanks" as the door closed and eagerly dug into them. They were better than the mongrelmen's meals, if only by virtue of not being mostly raw and served with dried fruit. Still, it was better than nothing, and she ate and drank eagerly.

When she was done, she passed the stuff back through the door, knocking slightly to let Dra'Nath know she was done. Then she settled down and did her best to sleep, keeping her nose and mouth by the crack at the bottom of the door. Fresh air was scarce.

She tried to imagine all the myriad ways she could've handled this situation better. She had never really reveled in the glorious slaughter and gleeful evil of the demons, though she had taken some perverse pleasure in being cruel to others. It was that pleasure which drove her to conquer the mongrelmen in the first place, to slaughter their leader and his mate and take over them.

Funny how much it sucks when you're the one being conquered.

"You're an odd one, Dra'Nath." ----- The spiked gauntlet he wore was ready to strike both times the door cracked open, but it thankfully proved unnecessary. Once her leavings were retrieved, he wrapped them up separately to offer again when they were ready to depart. The canteen he emptied, taking no chance for poison. He'd ask Tiresias for a refill later. Before he told them all about the second agreement he'd forged. He might have to go thirsty if he waited til after.